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FAITH, WAK, AND POLICY 



FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS ON 
THE EUROPEAN WAR 



GILBERT MUREAY 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

QH)e ffiitargibe tyxt$$ Cambriboe 

1917 






COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY GILBERT MURRAY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published August IQ17 



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SEP -8 1917 



©CI.A470960 
I 



PEEFACE 

Such interest as this book may possess will be, I 
think, in large part historical. Changes have assuredly 
been wrought in the minds of all thoughtful people 
throughout Europe by the experiences of these three 
shattering years. And it seems worth while to have a 
record of the mind of a fairly representative English 
Liberal, standing just outside the circle of official poli- 
tics. Consequently I have arranged the various papers 
in order of time rather than in groups according to 
subject, and I have not altered a sentence. 

The papers treat of the faith in which the British 
Government and nation entered the war, and in which 
for my part I still continue; of the war itself and the 
human problems raised by it and the impossibility, at 
two given dates, of immediate peace; lastly, of certain 
questions of international policy, such as the possibility 
of democratic control in foreign affairs, the action of 
Great Britain at sea, our attitude towards Ireland and 
India, and our relations with the United States. 

I have said nothing about home politics, because, in 
the first place, if I wished to exhort or to criticize my 
own Government, I should naturally do so at home and 
not in America; and in the second place, because, in 
spite of a number of minor issues which have caused 
acute feeling, there has not risen as yet any cardinal di- 
vision between our main political parties. The policy 
with which we entered the war still holds the field, and 
the unity of the nation, though at times dangerously 



vi PREFACE 

threatened, is still maintained. Most Conservatives will, 
I think, agree with me in considering that a large part 
of this all-important result has been due to the wisdom 
and magnanimity, both in office and out of office, of 
the Liberal leader, Mr. Asquith. 

There are, however, two grave problems ahead, which 
must needs be settled and which may possibly shatter 
that unity. One is the Irish Question. It may be that 
before these words are printed, Home Rule will be a 
fact, combined with whatever arrangement for Ulster 
the Ulstermen may desire. It may be that this present 
attempt at settlement, for which the House of Commons 
is calling in so resolute and sympathetic a spirit, will end 
in failure like its predecessors. The task is without doubt 
a difficult one. But a Government which permanently 
failed to deal with this flagrant danger to the Empire, 
and made the appearance of remaining content to hold 
down its own citizens with army corps which are needed 
against the Germans, could not, I think, long maintain 
itself in the respect of the nation. 

The other question, when it comes, will be even more 
vital. I mean the question of Peace. 

The only pure Peace candidate who has yet stood, a 
good speaker and a man much respected in the constitu- 
ency, Mr. Backhouse, obtained about 500 votes to his 
opponent's 7000. That is a conclusive defeat. We en- 
tered into the war for certain objects, and it is clear to 
the whole nation that we have not yet won them. I am 
inclined myself to believe that the greatest object of all 
is probably secured; I think we have proved to the 
world in general, and to Germany in particular, that the 
policy of aggressive and unscrupulous militarism is a 
policy that does not pay. But the Prussian dynasty 



PREFACE vii 

stands unbroken. We have not defeated Germany in the 
field. We have not secured the evacuation of France, 
the restoration of the injured nations, or the expulsion 
of the Turks from Europe. Consequently we cannot yet 
think of making peace. 

But a time will come when we shall have to think 
of it. 

It is not likely that we shall be defeated in this war; 
on the other hand, it is not at all probable that we shall 
win an absolute and crushing victory. We could not force 
unconditional surrender upon the Boers, though our 
Government prolonged the war for a year in the hope of 
doing so. We shall certainly not succeed in forcing it 
upon the Germans. No responsible soldier, no responsi- 
ble politician, expects such a thing. No one expects it 
except the most violent section of the press and the most 
credulous elements among the public. The question is 
therefore bound to arise sooner or later whether enough 
of our full purpose has been gained to justify us in 
accepting peace, or — more exactly — whether, once 
certain results have been attained, our cause is more 
likely to gain or to lose by further fighting. The han- 
dling of this question will be the crucial test of British 
statesmanship. 

For my own part I am prepared to approve of every 
item in the Allied Programme as stated, somewhat ob- 
scurely, in the joint note to President Wilson and ex- 
plained in Mr. Balfour's covering letter. Every item is, 
I believe, in itself desirable. But they vary both in im- 
portance and in expensiveness. If the main objects can 
be achieved this year or next year, to go on fighting in- 
definitely, a la Northcliffe, for the whole complete pro- 
gramme would be the action not only of wicked men, but 



viii PREFACE 

of fools. This is, I feel confident, the belief, spoken or 
unspoken, of the overwhelming majority of the nation, 
whether in the army or out of it. The problem, of course, 
will be to choose the best moment, neither too soon nor 
too late. 

Since the last of these papers was written, two events 
have occurred, so vast and beneficent, at least in their 
present appearances, that hitherto one had hardly dared 
to pray for them. The long-dreamed-of Russian Revolu- 
tion, for which through generation after generation so 
many martyrs have died, is at last a reality. One of the 
most gifted nations in the world, comprising a hundred 
and forty millions of human beings, after being held 
down for centuries under the worst despotism in the 
civilized world, is now free. This is marvellous, and we 
cannot yet take it in. 

The effect of the revolution on the fortunes of the war 
is, of course, still doubtful. It may be conclusive. It 
may, conceivably, provoke a similar movement in Ger- 
many and bring down that Prussian despotism which 
Mr. Lloyd George, in memorable words, has described 
as "the only obstacle to peace. ,, It may, again, result 
in utter disaster; in civil war or prolonged disorder at 
home, and with the Hohenzollerns in Petrograd restoring 
the Romanoffs. Most likely the new order will, in spite 
of friction and difficulty, maintain itself, and the Rus- 
sian people will fight on with the more resolution as they 
realize the more clearly that this war is the war of their 
own emancipation. All England is anxious and realizes 
the risk. But we take the risk gladly. I confess it made 
me proud of my country to see how universal was the 
welcome with which almost all classes here greeted the 



PREFACE ix 

revolution. No anxiety about our own fortunes could 
check that immense and instinctive outburst of happi- 
ness. 

In the second place, America has entered the war. I 
should like to explain why I rejoice at this event, which 
must seem to many of my American friends as, at best, 
a grievous necessity. 

America has come in most reluctantly and with ex- 
treme slowness. That is natural. She hates war as much 
as England does, and her provocations have been in- 
finitely less. She has not come in as our ally. She has 
come in to repel her own injuries. We have certainly no 
responsibility for dragging her into the war. 

But, once in, she must needs fight at our side, and 
thereby create some new national memories to temper, 
if not to obliterate, those of the past. Her two wars 
against England will be matched by one far greater war 
by the side of England. To me, as an Englishman who 
loves America, that is a great source of satisfaction. Of 
course we cannot tell yet what sort of action America 
means to take; but for our part the more fully and gen- 
erously she accepts her share in the world's burden the 
better the result will be. 

But there is something else at stake also. This war is 
deciding an issue more momentous than any duel be- 
tween the Entente and the Central Powers, more mo- 
mentous even than the restoration of the injured nations. 
It is deciding which of two fundamental principles is to 
rule the world — Democracy or Despotism, Freedom or )C n 
Compulsion, Consent or the Power of the Sword. It 
would have been surely an unspeakable calamity if, in 
that world-ordeal, the greatest of democratic nations 



x PREFACE 

had stood absolutely aside, not helping and, what is 
worse, not understanding. That calamity is now, almost 
for certain, avoided. America will still, no doubt, remain 
somewhat apart. There is no harm in that. She will 
not have to learn what France has learned, much less 
what Russia has learned. She will not even have to face 
as intimate a lesson as we have faced in Great Britain. 
But, while her soul will never be searched as ours has 
been, for that very reason her balance of mind may be 
less shaken, and that is a quality which will be extremely 
welcome at the Peace Conference. At the very worst, if 
the issue of the war should turn against this island, and 
the burden we have undertaken prove too heavy even 
for our colossal strength, we shall know that America, 
with greater strength than ours, still carries on the great 
cause to which we were faithful. 

I do not profess to define what the main lesson of the 
war will prove to be. The message is burned into our 
hearts, but we cannot yet read the characters clearly. 
But certainly we have seen, as no previous generation 
has seen, the extreme clash between the two great sys- 
tems which have hitherto held human societies together. 
We have seen, I trust, convincingly, the evil of the mil- 
itary form of State, a greater and more degrading evil 
than we ever surmised. It has turned the most educated 
nation of Europe into a nation of lost souls. But only 
a very shallow thinker will feel satisfied with the forms 
of society which the various democratic nations have 
hitherto opposed to it. Neither present England nor 
- N present France nor present America is a commonwealth 
which really deserves that its sons should die for it as 
men have died during this war. Russia is different. The 



PREFACE , 3d 

change there was very likely worth dying for; but only 
because of its promise, not its accomplishment. 

We have none of us done our duty as free societies. 
We have oppressed the poor; we have accepted adver- 
tisement in the place of truth; we have given too much 
power to money; and we have been indifferent to the 
quality of human character. The democracy of the 
future must be a great deal better and cleaner than any 
which now exists, with more reverence, more discipline, 
more love of beauty, more joy in life, as well as more 
social justice and better distribution of wealth, more 
freedom for the soul and more friendliness between man 
and man. Towards this end, however dimly seen and 
distantly followed, all the nations that have suffered to- 
gether in the War of the World's Liberation must con- 
tribute, bringing their various gifts. Where would the 
cause of democracy be if France stood aloof? or the 
new Russia? or the British Commonwealth? Or where 
would it be without America? The best result that I ex- 
pect from America's entrance into the war is not that she 
will send us more food or loans or munitions, or help us 
against submarines, or even lighten the burden of the 
front in France; but that in the upbuilding of democracy 
and permanent peace throughout the world, America 
and Great Britain will take their part together, united 
at last by the knowledge that they stand for the same 
causes, by a common danger and a common ordeal and, 
I will venture to add, a common consciousness of sin. 



CONTENTS 

I. First Thoughts on the War (August, 1914) 3 

Printed in the Hibbert Journal, October, 1914. 

II. How can War ever be Right? (Septem- 
ber, 1914) 20 

Printed as Oxford Pamphlet No. 18. 

III. Herd Instinct and the War (February, 

1915) 46 

Lecture at Bedford College. Printed in the At- 
lantic Monthly, June, 1915. 

IV. India and the War (March, 1915) . . 67 

Address to Indian Students. 

V. The Evil and the Good of the War 

(October, 1915) ....... 77 

Address to the Congress of Free Churches. Printed 
in the Inquirer, October 30, 1915. 

VI. Democratic Control of Foreign Policy 93 

Printed in the Contemporary Beview, February, 1916. 

VII. How we Stand Now (March, 1916) . . 114 

Address to the Fight for Right League. 

VIII. Ireland 129 

I. The Dublin Insurrection (June, 1916) 

II. The Execution of Casement (August 
3, 1916) 

III. The Future of Ireland (March 18, 1917) 
IX. America and the War (August, 1916) . 154 

Printed in the Westminster Gazette. 



V 



XIV 



CONTENTS 






X. America and England (November, 1916) 171 

Address to the Mayflower Club, November 14, 1916. 

XI. The Sea Policy of Great Britain (Octo- 
ber, 1916) . .184 

Printed in the Atlantic Monthly, December, 1916. 

XII. Oxford and the War : A Memoir of 
Arthur George Heath (September, 
1916) 212 

Published in March, 1917. 

XIII. The Turmoil of War (March, 1917) . 235 
Address to the Fight for Right League, March 4, 
1917. 



FAITH, WAK, AND POLICY 



FAITH, WAK, AND POLICY 



FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 

(August, 1914) 



"Not much news: Great Britain has declared war on 
Austria." The words fell quite simply, and with no in- 
tention of irony, from the lips of a friend of mine who 
picked up the newspaper on the day when I began to 
write down these thoughts, August 13. So amazingly had 
the world changed since the 4th. And it has changed 
even more by the time when I revise the proofs. 

During the month of July and earlier, English politics 
were by no means dull. For my own part, my mind was 
profoundly occupied with a number of public questions 
and causes: the whole maintenance of law and demo- 
cratic government seemed to be threatened, not to speak 
of social reform and the great self-redeeming movements 
of the working-class. In the forefront came anxiety 
for Home Rule and the Parliament Act, and a growing 
indignation against various classes of "wreckers": those 
reactionaries who seemed to be playing with rebellion, 
playing with militarism, recklessly inflaming the party 
spirit of minorities so as to make parliamentary govern- 
ment impossible; those revolutionaries who were openly 
preaching the Class War and urging the working-man 



4 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

to mistrust his own leaders and representatives and 
believe in nothing but some helpless gospel of hate. 

And now that is all swept away. We think no more 
of our great causes, and we think no more of our mutual 
hatreds. Good and evil come together. Our higher ideals 
are forgotten, but we are a band of brothers standing 
side by side. 

This is a great thing. The fine, instinctive generosity 
with which the House of Commons, from Mr. Bonar 
Law to Mr. Redmond, rose to the crisis has spread an 
impulse over the country. There is a bond of fellowship 
between Englishmen who before had no meeting-ground. 
In time past I have sometimes envied the working-men 
who can simply hail a stranger as "mate": we dons and 
men of letters seem in ordinary times to have no " mates " 
and no gift for getting them. But the ice between man 
and man is broken now. 

I think, too, that the feeling between different classes 
must have softened. Rich business men, whom I can 
remember a short time ago tediously eloquent on the 
vices of trades-unionists and of the working-classes in 
general, are now instantly and without hesitation mak- 
ing large sacrifices and facing heavy risks to see that as 
few men as possible shall be thrown out of work, and 
that no women and children shall starve. And working- 
men who have not money to give are giving more than 
money, and giving it without question or grudge. Thank 
God, we did not hate each other as much as we imagined; 
or else, while the hatred was real enough on the surface, 
at the back of our minds we loved each other more. 

And the band of brothers is greater and wider than 
any of us dared to believe. Many English hearts must 
have swelled with almost incredulous gratitude to hear 



FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 5 

of the messages and the gifts which come flooding in 
from all the dominions overseas: the gold, the grain, the 
sugar, the tobacco ; its special produce coming from each 
State, and from all of them throngs of young men offer- 
ing their strength and their life-blood. And India above 
all! One who has cared much about India and has 
friends among Indian Nationalists cannot read with dry 
eyes the messages that come from all races and creeds of 
India, from Hindu and Moslem societies, from princes 
and holy men and even political exiles. . . . We have 
not always been sympathetic in our government of India ; 
we have not always been wise. But we have tried to be 
just; and we have given to India the best work of our 
best men. It would have been hard on us if India had 
shown no loyalty at all ; but she has given us more than 
we deserved, more than we should have dared to claim. 
Neither Indian nor Englishman can forget it. 

II 

And there is something else. Travellers who have 
returned from France or Belgium — or Germany for 
that matter — tell us of the unhesitating heroism with 
which the ordinary men and women are giving them- 
selves to the cause of their nation. A friend of mine heard 
the words of one Frenchwoman to another who was see- 
ing her husband's train off to the front: " Ne pleurez pas, 
il vous voit encore." When he was out of sight the tears 
might come ! . . . Not thousands but millions of women 
are saying words like that to themselves, and millions of 
men going out to face death. 

We in England have not yet been put to the same 
tests as France and Belgium. We are in the flush of our 



6 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

first emotion; we have not yet had our nerves shaken by 
advancing armies, or our endurance ground down by 
financial distress. But, as far as I can judge of the feel- 
ings of people whom I meet, they seem to me to be ready 
to answer any call that comes. We ask for 200,000 re- 
cruits and receive 300,000, for half a million and we 
receive three quarters. We ask for more still, and the 
recruiting offices are overflowing. They cannot cope 
with the crowds of young men who cheerfully wait their 
turn at the office doors or on the pavement, while fierce 
old gentlemen continue to scold them in the newspapers. 
Certainly we are a quaint people. 

And in the field! A non-combatant stands humbled 
before the wonderful story of the retreat from Mons — 
the gallantry, the splendid skill, the mutual confidence 
of all ranks, the absolute faithfulness. One hardly dares 
praise such deeds; one admires them in silence. And it 
is not the worshippers of war who have done this; it is 
we, the good-natured, unmilitarist, ultra-liberal people, 
the nation of humanitarians and shopkeepers. 

Our army, indeed, is a professional army. What the 
French and the Belgians have done is an even more 
significant fact for civilization. It shows that the cul- 
tured, progressive, easy-living, peace-loving nations of 
western Europe are not corrupted, at least as far as 
courage goes. The world has just seen them, bourgeois 
and working-men, clerks, schoolmasters, musicians, gro- 
cers, ready in a moment when the call came; able to 
march and fight for long days of scorching sun or icy 
rain; willing, if need be, to die for their homes and 
countries, with no panic, no softening of the fibre . . . 
resolute to face death and to kill. 



FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 7 

III 

For there is that side of it too. We have now not only 
to strain every nerve to help our friend — we must strain 
every nerve also to injure our enemy. This is horrible, 
but we must try to face the truth. For my own part, 
I find that I do desperately desire to hear of German 
dreadnoughts sunk in the North Sea. Mines are treach- 
erous engines of death; but I should be only too glad to 
help to lay one for them. When I see that 20,000 Ger- 
mans have been killed in such-and-such an engagement, 
and next day that it was only 2000, I am sorry. 

That is where we are. We are fighting for that which 
we love, whatever we call it. It is the Right, but it is 
something even more than the Right. For our lives, for 
England, for the liberty of western Europe, for the possi- 
bility of peace and friendship between nations; for some- 
thing which we should rather die than lose. And lose it 
we shall unless we can beat the Germans. 



IV \ 

Yet I have scarcely met a single person who seems to 
hate the Germans. We abominate their dishonest Gov- 
ernment, their unscrupulous and arrogant diplomacy, 
the whole spirit of " blood-and-iron " ambition which 
seems to have spread from Prussia through a great part 
of the nation. But not the people in general. They, too, 
by whatever criminal folly they were led into war, are 
fighting now for what they call "the Right." For their 
lives and homes and their national pride, for that 
strange "Culture," that idol of blood and clay and true 
gold, which they have built up with so many tears. 



8 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

They have been trebly deceived; deceived by their Gov- 
ernment, deceived by their own idolatry, deceived by 
their sheer terror. They are ringed about by enemies; 
their one ally is broken; they hear the thunder of Cos- 
sack hoofs in the east coming ever closer; and hordes of 
stupid moujiks behind them, innumerable, clumsy, bar- 
barous, as they imagine in their shuddering dread, tread- 
ing down the beloved Fatherland as they come. . . . 
What do Germans care for punctilios and neutrality 
treaties in the face of such a horror as that? 

No: we cannot hate or blame the people in general. 
And certainly not the individual Germans whom we 
know. I have just by me a letter from young Fritz 
Hackmann, who was in Oxford last term and brought 
me an introduction from a Greek scholar in Berlin: a 
charming letter, full of gratitude for the very small 
friendlinesses I had been able to show him. I remember ■ 
his sunny smile and his bow with a click of the heels. He 
is now fighting us. . . . And there is Paul Maass, too, a 
young Doctor of Philosophy, recently married. He sent 
me a short time back the photograph of his baby, Ulf, 
and we exchanged small jokes about Ulf's look of 
wisdom and his knowledge of Greek and his imperious 
habits. And now of course Maass is with his regiment 
and we shall do our best to kill him, and after that to 
starve Ulf and Ulf 's mother. 

It is well for us to remember what war means when 
reduced to terms of private human life. Doubtless we 
have most of us met disagreeable Germans and been 
angry with them; but I doubt if we ever wanted to cut 
their throats or blow them to pieces with lyddite. And 
many thousands of us have German friends, or have 
come across good straight Germans in business, or have 



FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 9 

carried on smiling and incompetent conversations with 
kindly German peasants on walking tours. We must re- 
member such things as these, and not hate the Germans. 

"A little later it may be different. In a few weeks 
English and Germans will have done each other cruel 
and irreparable wrongs. The blood of those we love will 
lie between us. We shall hear stories of horrible suffering. 
Atrocities will be committed by a few bad or stupid peo- 
ple on both sides, and will be published and distorted 
and magnified. It will be hard to avoid hatred then; 
so it is well to try to think things out while our minds 
are still clear, while we still hate the war and not the 
enemy." 

So I wrote three weeks ago. By the time I revise these 
lines the prophecy has been more than fulfilled. No 
one had anticipated then that the nightmare doctrines 
of Bismarck and Nietzsche and Bernhardi would be 
actually enforced by official orders. " Cause to non- 
combatants the maximum of suffering: leave the women 
and children nothing but their eyes to weep with. . . ." 
We thought they said these things just to startle and 
shock us; and it now appears that some of them meant 
what they said. . . . Still we must not hate the German 
people. Who knows how many secret acts of mercy, 
mercy at risk of life and against orders, were done at 
Lou vain and Dinant? Germans are not demons; they 
are naturally fine and good people. And they will wake 
from their evil dream. 



"Never again!" I see that a well-known imperialist 
writes to the papers saying that these words should be 
embroidered on the kit-bags of the Royal Navy and 



10 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

painted on the knapsacks of all our soldiers. The aspira- 
tion is perhaps too bold, for "Never" is a very large 
word; but I believe it is the real aspiration of most civil- 
ized men, certainly of most Englishmen. We are righting 
for our national life, for our ideals of freedom and honest 
government and fair dealing between nations: but most 
men, if asked what they would like to attain at the end 
of this war, if it is successful, would probably agree in 
their answer. We seek no territory, no aggrandizement, 
no revenge; we only want to be safe from the recurrence 
of this present horror. We want permanent peace for 
Europe and freedom for each nation. 

What is the way to attain it? The writer whom I have 
quoted goes on: "The war must not end until German 
warships are sunk, her fortresses razed to the ground, 
her army disbanded, her munitions destroyed, and the 
military and civil bureaucrats responsible for opening 
hell gates are shot or exiled." As if that would bring us 
any nearer to a permanent peace! Crushing Germany 
would do no good. It would point straight towards a 
war of revenge. It is not Germany, it is a system, that 
needs crushing. Other nations before Germany have 
menaced the peace of Europe, and other nations will do 
so again after Germany, if the system remains the same. 

VI 

It is interesting to look back at the records of the 
Congress of Vienna in 1815, at the end of the last great 
war of allied Europe against a military despotism. 

It was hoped then, a standard historian tells us, "that 
so great an opportunity would not be lost, but that the 
statesmen would initiate such measures of international 



FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 11 

disarmament as would perpetuate the blessings of that 
peace which Europe was enjoying after twenty years of 
warfare." Certain Powers wished to use the occasion for 
crushing and humiliating France; but fortunately they 
did not carry the Congress with them. Talleyrand per- 
suaded the Congress to accept the view that the recent 
wars had not been wars of nations, but of principles. It 
had not been Austria, Russia, Prussia, England, against 
France; it had been the principle of legitimacy against all 
that was illegitimate, treaty-breaking, revolution, usur- 
pation. Bonapartism was to be destroyed; France was 
not to be injured. 

Castlereagh, the English representative, concentrated 
his efforts upon two great objects. The first, which he 
just failed to obtain, owing chiefly to difficulties about 
Turkey, was a really effective and fully armed Concert 
of Europe. He wished for a united guarantee from all 
the Powers that they would accept the settlement made 
by the Congress and would, in future, wage collective 
war against the first breaker of the peace. The second 
object, which he succeeded in gaining, was, curiously 
enough, an international declaration of the abolition of 
the slave trade. 

The principle of legitimacy — of ordinary law and 
right and custom — as against lawless ambition : a Con- 
cert of Powers pledged by collective treaty to maintain 
and enforce peace; and the abolition of the slave trade! 
It sounds like the scheme of some new Utopia, and it 
was really a main part of the political programme of 
the leaders of the Congress of Vienna — of Castlereagh, 
Metternich, Talleyrand, Alexander of Russia, and 
Frederick William of Prussia. . . . They are not names 
to rouse enthusiasm nowadays. All except Talleyrand 



12 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

were confessed enemies of freedom and enlightenment 
and almost everything that we regard as progressive; and 
Talleyrand, though occasionally on the right side in such 
matters, was not a person to inspire confidence. Yet, 
after all, they were more or less reasonable human beings, 
and a bitter experience had educated them. Doubtless 
they blundered; they went on all kinds of wrong princi- 
ples; they based their partition of Europe on what they 
called " legitimacy," a perfectly artificial and false 
legitimacy, rather than nationality; they loathed and 
dreaded popular movements; they could not quite keep 
their hands from a certain amount of picking and steal- 
ing. Yet, on the whole, we find these men at the end of 
the Great War fixing their minds not on glory and pres- 
tige and revenge, not on conventions and shams, but on 
ideals so great and true and humane and simple that 
most Englishmen in ordinary life are ashamed of men- 
tioning them; trying hard to make peace permanent on 
the basis of what was recognized as "legitimate" or fair; 
and, amid many differences, agreeing at least in the uni- 
versal abolition of the slave trade. 



VII 

Our next conference of Europe ought to do far better 
if only we can be sure that it will meet in the same high 
spirit. Instead of Castlereagh, we shall send from Eng- 
land some one like Mr. Asquith or Sir Edward Grey, with 
ten times more progressive and liberal feeling and ten 
times more insight and understanding. Even suppose we 
send a Conservative, Mr. Balfour or Lord Lansdowne, 
the advance upon Castlereagh will be almost as great. 
Instead of Talleyrand, France will send one of her many 



FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 13 

able republican leaders, from Clemenceau to Delcass6, 
certainly more honest and humane than Talleyrand. 
And Germany — who can say? Except that it may be 
some one very different from these militarist schemers 
who have brought their country to ruin. In any case it 
is likely to be a wiser man than Frederick William, just 
as Russia is bound to send a wiser man than Alexander. 

And behind these representatives there will be a 
deeper and far more intelligent feeling in the various 
peoples. In 1815 the nations were sick of war after 
long fighting. I doubt if there was any widespread 
conviction that war was in itself an abomination and 
an outrage on humanity. Philosophers felt it, some 
inarticulate women and peasants and workmen felt it. 
But now such a feeling is amost universal. It commands 
a majority in any third-class railway carriage; it is ex- 
pressed almost as a matter of course in the average 
newspaper. 

Between Waterloo and the present day there has 
passed one of the greatest and most swiftly progressive 
centuries of all human history, and the heart of Europe 
is really changed. I do not say we shall not have Jingo 
crowds or that our own hearts will not thrill with the 
various emotions of war, whether base or noble. But 
there is a change. Ideas that once belonged to a few 
philosophers have sunk into common men's minds; Tol- 
stoy has taught us, the intimate records of modern wars 
have taught us, free intercourse with foreigners has edu- 
cated us, even the illustrated papers have made us real- 
ize things. In 1914 it is not that we happen to be sick of 
war; it is that we mean to extirpate war out of the nor- 
mal possibilities of civilized life, as we have extirpated 
leprosy and typhus. 



14 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

VIII 

What kind of settlement can we hope to attain at the 
end of it all? 

The question is still far off, and may have assumed 
astonishingly different shapes by the time we reach it, 
but it is perhaps well to try, now while we are calm and 
unhurt, to think out what we would most desire. 

First of all, no revenge, no deliberate humiliation of 
any enemy, no picking and stealing. 

Next, a drastic resettlement of all those burning 
problems which carry in them the seeds of European 
war, especially the problems of territory. Many of the 
details will be very difficult; some may prove insoluble. 
But in general we must try to arrange, even at consid- 
erable cost, that territory goes with nationality. The 
annexation of Alsace-Lorraine has disturbed the west 
of Europe for forty years; the wrong distributions of 
territory in the Balkan peninsula have kept the spark 
of war constantly alive in the East, and have not been 
fully corrected by the last Balkan settlement. Every 
nation which sees a slice of itself cut off and held under 
foreign rule is a danger to peace, and so is every nation 
that holds by force or fraud an alien province. At this 
moment, if Austria had not annexed some millions of 
Serbians in Bosnia and Herzegovina she would have no 
mortal quarrel with Serbia. Any drastic rearrangement 
of this sort will probably involve the break-up of Austria, 
a larger Italy, a larger Serbia, a larger Germany — for 
the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, of Danish Schleswig, and 
the Polish provinces would be more than compensated 
by the accession of the Germanic parts of Austria — 
and a larger Russia. But it is not big nations that are 



FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 15 

a menace to peace; it is nations with a grievance or na- 
tions who know that others have a grievance against 
them. 

And shall we try again to achieve Castlereagh's and 
Alexander's ideal of a permanent Concert, pledged to 
make collective war upon the peace-breaker? Surely we 
must. We must at all costs and in spite of all difficul- 
ties, because the alternative means such unspeakable 
failure. We must learn to agree, we civilized nations of 
Europe, or else we must perish. I believe that the chief 
counsel of wisdom here is to be sure to go far enough. 
We need a permanent Concert, perhaps a permanent 
Common Council, in which every awkward problem can 
be dealt with before it has time to grow dangerous, and 
in which outvoted minorities must accustom themselves 
to giving way. If we examine the failures of the Euro- 
pean Concert in recent years we shall find them generally 
due to two large causes. Either some Powers came into 
the council with unclean hands, determined to grab 
alien territory or fatally compromised because they had 
grabbed it in the past; or else they met too late, when 
the air was full of mistrust, and not to yield had become 
a point of honour. Once make certain of good faith and 
a clean start, and surely there is in the great Powers of 
Europe sufficient unity of view and feeling about funda- 
mental matters to make it possible for them to work 
honestly together — at any rate, when the alternative 
is stark ruin. ... It is well to remember that in this 
matter, from Alexander I onward, Russia has steadily 
done her best to lead the way. 

And the abolition of the slave trade! It is wonder- 
ful to think that that was not only talked about but 
really achieved; the greatest abomination in the world 



16 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

definitely killed, finished and buried, never to return, 
as a result of the meeting of the Powers at the end of 
the Great War. What can we hope for to equal that? 
The limitation of armaments seems almost small in 
comparison. 

We saw in the first week of the war what a nation 
and a government can do when the need or the oppor- 
tunity comes. Armies and fleets mobilized, war risks 
assured, railways taken over, prices fixed . . . things that 
seemed almost impossible accomplished successfully in 
a few days. One sentence in Mr. Lloyd George's speech 
on the financial situation ran thus, if I remember the 
words: "This part of the subject presents some peculiar 
difficulties, but I have no doubt they will be surmounted 
with the utmost ease." That is the spirit in which our 
Government has risen to its crisis, a spirit not of shallow 
optimism, but of that active and hard-thinking confi- 
dence which creates its own fulfilment. The power of 
man over circumstance is now — even now in the midst 
of this one terrific failure — immeasurably greater than 
it has ever yet been in history. Every year that passes 
has shown its increase. When the next settling day 
comes the real will of reasonable man should be able to 
assert itself and achieve its end with a completeness not 
conceivable in 1815. 



IX 

This is not the time to make any definite proposals. 
Civilization has still many slave trades to abolish. The 
trade in armaments is perhaps the most oppressive of 
all, but there are others also, slave trades social and in- 
timate and international; no one can tell yet which ones 



FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 17 

and how many it may be possible to overthrow. But 
there is one thing that we must see. This war and the 
national aspiration behind the war must not be allowed 
to fall into the hands of the militarists. I do not say that 
we must not be ready for some form of universal service : 
that will depend on the circumstances in which the war 
leaves us. But we must not be militarized in mind and 
feeling; we must keep our politics British and not Prus- 
sian. That is the danger. It is the danger in every war. 
In time of war every interest, every passion, tends to be 
concentrated on the mere fighting, the gaining of ad- 
vantages, the persistent use of cunning and force. An 
atmosphere tends to grow up in which the militarist and 
the schemer are at home and the liberal and democrat 
homeless. 

There are many thousands of social reformers and 
radicals in this country who instinctively loathe war, 
and have been convinced only with the utmost reluc- 
tance, if at all, of the necessity of our fighting. The 
danger is that these people, containing among them 
some of our best guides and most helpful political think- 
ers, may from disgust and discouragement fall into the 
background and leave public opinion to the mercy of our 
own Von Tirpitzes and Bernhardis. That would be the 
last culminating disaster. It would mean that the war 
had ceased to be a war for free Europe against militarism, 
and had become merely one of the ordinary sordid and 
bloody struggles of nation against nation, one link in the 
insane chain of wrongs that lead ever to worse wrongs. 

One may well be thankful that the strongest of the 
neutral Powers is guided by a leader so wise and upright 
and temperate as President Wilson. One may be thank- 
ful, too, that both here and in France we have in power 



18 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

not only a very able Ministry, but a strongly Liberal and 
peace-loving Ministry. In the first place, it unites the 
country far more effectively than any Ministry which 
could be suspected of Jingoism. In the second place, it 
gives us a chance of a permanent settlement, based on 
wisdom and not on ambition. It is fortunate also that 
in Russia the more liberal elements in the Government 
seem to be predominant. Some English Liberals seem 
to be sorry and half ashamed that we have Russia as an 
ally; for my own part I am glad and proud. Not only be- 
cause of her splendid military achievements, but because, 
so far as I can read the signs of such things, there is in 
Russia, more than in other nations, a vast untapped 
reservoir of spiritual power, of idealism, of striving for 
a nobler life. And that is what Europe will most need at 
the end of this bitter material struggle. I am proud to 
think that the liberal and progressive elements in Russia 
are looking towards England and feeling strengthened 
by English friendship. "This is for us," said a great 
Russian Liberal to me some days ago, — "this is for us 
a Befreiungskrieg (war of liberation). After this, re- 
action is impossible." We are fighting not only to de- 
fend Russian governors and Russian peasants against 
German invasion, but also, and perhaps even more pro- 
foundly, to enable the Russia of Turgenieff and Tolstoy, 
the Russia of many artists and many martyrs, to work 
out its destiny and its freedom. If the true Russia has 
a powerful voice in the final settlement it will be a great 
thing for humanity. 

Of course, all these hopes may be shattered and made 
ridiculous before the settlement comes. They would be 
shattered, probably, by a German victory; not because 
Germans are wicked, but because a German victory at 



FIRST THOUGHTS ON THE WAR 19 

the present time would mean a victory for blood-and- 
iron. They would be shattered, certainly, if in each sep- 
arate country the liberal forces abandoned the situation 
to the reactionaries, and stood aside while the nation fell 
into that embitterment and brutalization of feeling 
which is the natural consequence of a long war. 

To prevent the first of these perils is the work of our 
armies and navies; to prevent the second should be the 
work of all thoughtful non-combatants. It may be a 
difficult task, but at least it is not hideous; and some of 
the work that we must do is. So hideous, indeed, that 
at times it seems strange that we can carry it out at all 
— this war of civilized men against civilized men, against 
our intellectual teachers, our brothers in art and science 
and healing medicine, and so large a part of all that 
makes life beautiful. When we remember all this it 
makes us feel lost and heavy-hearted, like men struggling 
and unable to move in an evil dream. . . . So, it seems, 
for the time being we must forget it. We modern men 
are accustomed by the needs of life to this division of 
feelings. In every war, in every competition almost, 
there is something of the same difficulty, and we have 
learned to keep the two sides of our mind apart. We 
must fight our hardest, indomitably, gallantly, even 
joyously, forgetting all else while we have to fight. When 
the fight is over we must remember. 



II ' 

HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 

(September, 1914) 

I have all my life been an advocate of Peace. I hate 
war, not merely for its own cruelty and folly, but because 
it is the enemy of all the causes that I care for most, of 
social progress and good government and all friendliness 
and gentleness of life, as well as of art and learning and 
literature. I have spoken and presided at more meetings 
than I can remember for peace and arbitration and the 
promotion of international friendship. I opposed the 
policy of war in South Africa with all my energies, and 
have been either outspokenly hostile or inwardly un- 
sympathetic towards almost every war that Great 
Britain has waged in my lifetime. If I may speak more 
personally, there is none of my own work into which I 
have put more intense feeling than into my translation 
of Euripides* "Trojan Women," the first great denuncia- 
tion of war in European literature. I do not regret any 
word that I have spoken or written in the cause of Peace, 
nor have I changed, so far as I know, any opinion that 
I have previously held on this subject. Yet I believe 
firmly that we were right to declare war against Ger- 
many on August 4, 1914, and that to have remained 
neutral in that crisis would have been a failure in public 
duty. 

A heavy responsibility — there is no doubt of it — 
lies upon Great Britain. Our allies, France and Russia, 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 21 

Belgium and Serbia, had no choice; the war was, in 
various degrees, forced on all of them. We only, after 
deliberately surveying the situation, when Germany 
would have preferred for the moment not to fight us, of 
our free will declared war. And we were right. 

How can such a thing be? It is easy enough to see 
that our cause is right, and the German cause, by all 
ordinary human standards, desperately wrong. It is 
hardly possible to study the official papers issued by the 
British, the German, and the Russian Governments, 
without seeing thlft Germany — or some party in Ger- 
many — had plotted this war beforehand; that she chose 
a moment when she fought her neighbours were at a 
disadvantage; that she^revented Austria from making 
a settlement even at the k^t moment; that in order to 
get more quickly at France she violated her treaty with 
Belgium. Evidence too strong to resist seems to show 
that she has carried out the violation with a purposeful 
cruelty that has no parallel in the wars of modern and 
civilized nations. Yet some people may still feel gravely - 
doubtful. Germany's ill-doing is no reason for us to do 
likewise. We did our best to keep the general peace; 
there we were right. We failed; the German Govern- 
ment made war in spite of us. There we were unfortu- 
nate. It was a war already on an enormous scale, a vast 
network of calamity ranging over five nations; and we 
decided to make it larger still. There we were wrong. 
Could we not have stood aside, as the United States 
stand, ready to help refugees and sufferers, anxious to 
heal wounds and not make them, watchful for the first 
chance of putting an end to this time of horror? 

"Try for a moment," an objector to our policy might 



22 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

say, "to realize the extent of suffering involved in one 
small corner of a battlefield. You have seen a man here 
and there badly hurt in an accident; you have seen 
perhaps a horse with its back broken, and you can re- 
member how dreadful it seemed to you. In that one 
corner how many men, how many horses, will be lying, 
hurt far worse and just waiting to die? Indescribable 
wounds, extreme torment; and all, far further than any 
eye can see, multiplied and multiplied! And, for all 
your righteous indignation against Germany, what have 
these done? The horses are not to blame for anybody's 
foreign policy. They have only come where their 
masters took them. And the masters themselves . . . 
admitting that certain highly placed Germans, whose 
names we are not sure of, are as wicked as ever you like, 
these soldiers — peasants and working-men and shop- 
keepers and schoolmasters — have really done nothing 
in particular; at least, perhaps they have now, but they 
had not up to the time when you, seeing they were in- 
volved in war and misery already, decided to make war 
on them also and increase their sufferings. You say 
that justice must be done on conspirators and public 
malefactors. But so far as the rights and wrongs of the 
war go, you are simply condemning innocent men, by 
thousands and thousands, to death, or even to mutilation 
and torture; is that the best way to satisfy your sense of 
justice? These innocent people, you will say, are fight- 
ing to protect the guilty parties whom you are deter- 
mined to reach. Well, perhaps, at the end of the war, 
after millions of innocent people have suffered, you may 
at last, if all goes well with your arms, get at the 'guilty 
parties.' You will hold an inquiry, with imperfect evi- 
dence and biased judges; you will decide — in all likeli- 



[HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 23 

hood wrongly — that a dozen very stupid and obstinate 
Prussians with long titles are the guilty parties, and even 
then you will not know what to do with them. You will 
probably try, and almost certainly fail, to make them 
somehow feel ashamed or humiliated. It is likely enough 
that you will merely make them into national heroes. 

" And after all, this is assuming quite the best sort of 
war: a war in which one party is wrong and the other 
right, and the right wins. Suppose both are wrong; 
or suppose the wrong party wins? It is as likely as not; 
for, if the right party is helped by his good conscience, 
the wrong has probably taken pains to have the odds 
on his side before he began quarrelling. In that case all 
the wild expenditure of blood and treasure, all the im- 
measurable suffering of innocent individuals and dumb 
animals, all the tears of women and children in the back- 
ground, have taken place not to vindicate the right, but 
to establish the wrong. To do a little evil that great or 
certain good may come is all very well; but to do almost 
infinite evil for a doubtful chance of attaining something 
which half the people concerned may think good and the 
other half think bad, and which in no imaginable case 
can ever be attained in fullness or purity . . . that is 
neither good morals nor good sense. Anybody not in a 
passion must see that it is insanity.' ' 
« 

I sympathize with every step of this argument; yet 
I think it is wrong. It is judging of the war as a profit- 
and-loss account, and reckoning, moreover, only the im- 
mediate material consequences. It leaves out of sight 
the cardinal fact that in some causes it is better to fight 
and be broken than to yield peacefully; that sometimes 
the mere act of resisting to the death is in itself a victory. 



24 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

Let us try to understand this. The Greeks who fought 
and died at Thermopylae had no manner of doubt that 
they were right so to fight and die, and all posterity 
has agreed with them. They probably knew they would 
be defeated. They probably expected that, after their 
defeat, the Persians would proceed easily to conquer the 
rest of Greece, and would treat it much more harshly 
because it had resisted. But such considerations did not 
affect them. They would not consent to their country's 
dishonour. 

Take again a very clear modern case: the fine story 
of the French tourist who was captured, together with a 
priest and some other white people, by Moorish robbers. 
The Moors gave their prisoners the choice either to 
trample on the Cross or to be killed. The Frenchman 
happened to be a Freethinker and an anti-clerical. He 
disliked Christianity. But he was not going to trample 
on the Cross at the orders of a robber. He stuck to his 
companions and died. 

This sense of honour and the respect for this sense 
of honour are very deep instincts in the average man. 
In the United States there is a rather specially strong 
feeling against mixture of blood, not only with the blood 
of coloured people, but with that of the large masses of 
mankind who are lumped together as " dagoes' ' or 
"hunkies." Yet I have noticed that persons with a dash 
of Red Indian blood are not ashamed but rather proud 
of it. And if you look for the reason, I suspect it lies 
in the special reputation which the Indian has acquired, 
that he would never consent to be a slave. He preferred 
to fight till he was dead. 

A deal of nonsense, no doubt, is talked about "hon* 
our" and " dishonour." They are feelings based on sen- 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 25 

timent, not on reason; the standards by which they are 
judged are often conventional or shallow, and some- 
times utterly false. Yet honour and dishonour are real 
things. I will not try to define them; but will only notice 
that, like religion, their characteristic is that they ad- 
mit of no bargaining. Indeed, we can almost think of 
honour as being simply that which a free man values 
more than life, and dishonour as that which he avoids 
more than suffering or death. And the important point 
for us is that there are such things. 

There are some people, followers of Tolstoy, who ac- 
cept this position so far as dying is concerned, but will 
have nothing to do with killing. Passive resistance, they 
say, is right; martyrdom is right; but to resist violence 
by violence is sin. 

I was once walking with a friend and disciple of 
Tolstoy's in a country lane, and a little girl was running 
in front of us. I put to him the well-known question: 
"Suppose you saw a man, wicked or drunk or mad, 
run out and attack that child. You are a big man and 
carry a big stick : would you not stop him and, if neces- 
sary, knock him down?" "No," he said, "why should 
I commit a sin? I would try to persuade him, I would 
stand in his way, I would let him kill me, but I would 
not strike him." Some few people will always be found, 
less than one in a thousand, to take this view. They will 
say: "Let the little girl be killed or carried off; let the 
wicked man commit another wickedness; I, at any rate, 
will not add to the mass of useless violence that I see 
all round me." 

With such persons one cannot reason, though one can 
often respect them. Nearly every normal man will feel 



26 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

that the real sin, the real dishonour, lies in allowing an 
abominable act to be committed under your eyes while 
you have the strength to prevent it. And the stronger 
you are, the greater your chance of success, by so much 
the more are you bound to intervene. If the robbers are 
overpoweringly strong and there is no chance of beating 
or baffling them, then and only then should you think of 
martyrdom. Martyrdom is not the best possibility. It 
is almost the worst. It is a counsel of despair, the last 
resort when there is no hope of successful resistance. 
The best thing — suppose once the robbers are there 
and intent on crime — the best thing is to overawe them 
at once; the next best, to defeat them after a hard 
struggle; the third best, to resist vainly and be martyred; 
the worst of all, the one evil that need never be endured, 
is to let them have their will without protest. (As for 
converting them from their evil ways, that is a process 
which may be hoped for afterwards.) 

We have noticed that in all these cases of honour 
there is, or at least there seems to be, no counting of 
cost, no balancing of good and evil. In ordinary con- 
duct, we are always balancing the probable results of 
this course or that; but when honour or religion comes 
on the scene all such balancing ceases. If you argued to 
the Christian martyr: "Suppose you do burn the pinch 
of incense, what will be the harm? All your friends 
know you are really a Christian : they will not be misled. 
The idol will not be any the better for the incense, nor 
will your own true God be any the worse. Why should 
you bring misery on yourself and all your family?" Or 
suppose you pleaded, with the French atheist: "Why in 
the world should you not trample on the Cross? It is 
the sign of the clericalism to which you object. Even if 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 27 

trampling somewhat exaggerates your sentiments, the 
harm is small. Who will be a penny the worse for your 
trampling? While you will live instead of dying, and all 
your family be happy instead of wretched." Suppose 
you said to the Red Indian: "My friend, you are out- 
numbered by ten to one. If you will submit uncondition- 
ally to these pale-faces, and be always civil and obliging, 
they will probably treat you quite well. If they do not, 
well, you can reconsider the situation later on. No need 
to get yourself killed at once." 

The people concerned would not condescend to meet 
your arguments. Perhaps they can be met, perhaps 
not. But it is in the very essence of religion or honour 
that it must outweigh all material considerations. The 
point of honour is the point at which a man says to some 
proposal, " I will not do it. I will rather die." 

These things are far easier to see where one man is 
involved than where it is a whole nation. But they arise 
with nations too. In the case of a nation the material 
consequences are much larger, and the point of honour 
is apt to be less clear. But, in general, whenever one 
nation in dealing with another relies simply on force or 
fraud, and denies to its neighbour the common consid- 
eration due to human beings, a point of honour must 
arise. 

Austria says suddenly to Serbia: "You are a wicked 
little State. I have annexed and governed against their 
will some millions of your countrymen, yet you are still 
full of anti-Austrian feeling, which I do not intend to 
allow. You will dismiss from your service all officials, 
politicians, and soldiers who do not love Austria, and 
I will further send you from time to time lists of persons 



28 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

* 

whom you are to dismiss or put to death. And if you do 
not agree to this within forty-eight hours, I, being vastly 
stronger than you, will make you." As a matter of fact, 
Serbia did her very best to comply with Austria's de- 
mands; she accepted about two thirds of them, and asked 
. for arbitration on the remaining third. But it is clear 
that she could not accept them all without being dis- 
honoured. That is, Serbia would have given up her 
freedom at the threat of force; the Serbs would no longer 
be a free people, and every individual Serb would have 
been humiliated. He would have confessed himself to 
be the kind of man who will yield when an Austrian 
bullies him. And if it is urged that under good Austrian 
government Serbia would become richer and safer, and 
the Serbian peasants get better markets, such pleas can- 
not be listened to. They are a price offered for slavery; 
and a free man will not accept slavery at a price. 

Germany, again, says to Belgium (we leave out for 
the moment the fact of Germany's special treaty obliga- 
tions), "We have no quarrel with you, but we intend 
for certain reasons to march across your territory and 
perhaps fight a battle or two there. We know that you 
are pledged by treaty not to allow any such thing, but we 
cannot help that. Consent, and we will pay you some 
compensation afterwards; refuse, and we shall make 
you wish you had never been born." At that moment 
Belgium was a free self-governing State. If she had 
yielded to Germany's demand, she would have ceased to 
be either. It is possible that, if Germany had been com- 
pletely victorious and France quite unable to retaliate, 
Belgium would have suffered no great material injury; 
but she would have taken orders from a stranger who 
had no right to give them, simply because he was strong 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 29 

and Belgium dared not face him. Belgium refused 1 . She 
has had some of her principal towns destroyed, some 
thousands of her soldiers killed, many more thousands of 
her women, children, and non-combatants outraged and 
beggared; but she is still free. She has still her honour. 

Let us think this matter out more closely. Our 
Tolstoyan will say: "We speak of Belgium's honour 
and Serbia's honour; but who is Serbia and who is 
Belgium? There is no such person as either. There are 
only great numbers of people who happen to be Serbians 
and Belgians, and who mostly have had nothing to do 
with the questions at issue. Some of them are honour- 
able people, some dishonourable. The honour of each 
one of them depends very much on whether he pays his 
debts and tells the truth, but not in the least on whether 
a number of foreigners walk through his country or in- 
terfere with his Government. King Albert and his Min- 
isters might feel humiliated if the German Government 
compelled them to give way against their will; but would 
the ordinary population? Would the ordinary peasant 
or shopkeeper or artisan in the districts of Vise* and 
Liege and Louvain have felt particularly disgraced or 
ashamed? He would probably have made a little money 
and been greatly amused by the sight of the troops pass- 
ing. Who will pretend that he would have suffered any 
injury that can for a moment be compared with what he 
has suffered now, in order that his Government may feel 
proud of itself?" 

I will not raise the point that, as a matter of fact, 
to grant a right of way to Germany would have been 
equivalent to declaring war against France, so that 
Belgium would not, by giving up her independence, have 



30 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

been spared the danger of war. I will assume that 
nothing but honour was involved. In that form, this 
question goes to the root of our whole conception of 
citizenship and the position of man in society. And I 
believe that our Tolstoyan friend is profoundly wrong. 
Is it true, in a healthy and well-governed State, that 
the average citizen is indifferent to the honour of his 
country? We know that it is not. True, the average 
citizen may often not understand what is going on, but 
as soon as he knows he cares. Suppose for a moment 
that the King, or the Prime Minister, or the President 
of the United States, were found to be in the pay of a 
foreign State, as for instance Charles II was in the pay 
of Louis XIV, can any one pretend that the ordinary 
citizens of Great Britain or America would take it 
quietly? that any normal man would be found saying: 
"Well, the King, or the President, or the Prime Minister, 
is behaving dishonourably, but that is a matter for him, 
not for me. I am an honest and honourable man, and 
my Government can do what it likes." The notion is 
absurd. The ordinary citizen would feel instantly and 
without question that his country's honour involved his 
own. And woe to the society in which it were other- 
wise! We know of such societies in history. They are 
the kind which is called " corrupt, " and which generally 
has not long to live. Belgium has proved that she is not 
that kind of society. 

But what about Great Britain herself? At the present 
moment a very clear case has arisen, and we can test our 
own feelings. Great Britain had, by a solemn treaty 
more than once renewed, pledged herself to maintain the 
neutrality of Belgium. Belgium is a little State lying 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 31 

between two very strong States, France and Germany, 
and in danger of being overrun or maltreated by one 
of them unless the Great Powers guarantee her safety. 
The treaty, signed by Prussia, Russia, Austria, France, 
and Great Britain, bound all these Powers not to attack 
Belgium, move troops into her territory, or annex any 
part of it; and further, to resist by armed force any 
Power which should try to do any of these things. Bel- 
gium, on her part, was bound to maintain her own neu- 
trality to the best of her power, and not to side with any 
State which was at war with another. 

At the end of last July the exact case arose in which 
we had pledged ourselves to act. Germany suddenly and 
without excuse invaded Belgium, and Belgium appealed 
to us and France to defend her. Meantime she fought 
alone, desperately, against overwhelming odds. The 
issue was clear, and free from any complications. The 
German Chancellor, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, in his 
speech of August 6, admitted that Germany had no 
grievance against Belgium, and no excuse except " neces- 
sity.' ' She could not get to France quick enough by the 
direct road. Germany put her case to us, roughly, on 
these grounds. "True, you did sign a treaty, but what 
is a treaty? We ourselves signed the same treaty, and 
see what we are doing ! Anyhow, treaty or no treaty, we 
have Belgium absolutely in our power. If she had done 
what we wanted, we would have treated her kindly; as 
it is we shall show her no mercy. If you will now do 
what we want and stay quiet, later on, at our conven- 
ience, we will consider a friendly deal with you. If you 
interfere, you must take the consequences. We trust 
you will not be so insane as to plunge your whole Empire 
into clanger for the sake of 'a scrap of paper.'" Our 



32 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

answer was: ''Evacuate Belgium within twelve hours or 
we fight you." 

I think that answer was right. Consider the situation 
carefully. No question arises of overhaste or lack of 
patience on our part. From the first moment of the 
crisis, we had laboured night and day in every Court of 
Europe for any possible means of conciliation and peace. 
We had carefully and sincerely explained to Germany 
beforehand what attitude she might expect from us. 
We did not send our ultimatum till Belgium was already 
invaded. It is just the plain question put to the British 
Government, and, I think, to every one who feels himself 
a British citizen: "The exact case contemplated in your 
treaty has arisen: the people you swore to protect is 
being massacred; will you keep your word at a gigantic 
cost, or will you break it at the bidding of Germany?" 
For my own part, weighing the whole question soberly 
and without undue passion, I feel that in this case I would 
rather die than submit; and I believe that the Govern- 
ment, in deciding to keep its word at the cost of war, has 
rightly interpreted the feeling of the average British 
citizen. 

So much for the question of honour, pure and simple; 
honour without regard for consequences. But, of course, 
situations in real political life are never so simple as that; 
they have many different aspects and ramifications. 
And in the present case, though the point of honour 
happens to be quite clear, it seems probable that even 
without it there were compelling reasons for war. I do 
not, of course, for a moment mean that war was going 
to be "profitable" to Great Britain; such a calculation 
would be infamous. I mean that, terrible as the conse- 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 33 

quences of our taking part in the war were sure to be, 
the consequences of our not doing so were likely to be 
even more profoundly and widely evil. 

Let us leave aside, then, the definite treaty binding 
us to Belgium. Apart from that, we were faced with 
a complicated question of statesmanship, of prudence, 
of patriotism towards our own country and towards 
humanity. 

Germany has for years presented a problem to Europe. 
Since her defeat of France in 1870, she has been extra- 
ordinarily successful, and the success seems to have in- 
toxicated her. This is a complicated subject, which calls 
for far deeper knowledge than I possess. I will merely 
try to state, as fairly as I can, the impression that has 
been forced on me by a certain amount of reading and 
observation. From the point of view of one who really 
believes that great nations ought to behave to one 
another as scrupulously and honourably as ordinary, 
law-abiding men, no Power in Europe, or out of it, is 
quite blameless. They all have ambitions; they all, to 
some extent, use spies; they all, within limits, try to 
outwit each other; in their diplomatic dealings they 
rely not only on the claims of good sense and justice, 
but ultimately, no doubt, on the threat of possible force. 
But, as a matter of degree, Germany does all these 
things more than other Powers. In her diplomacy, force 
comes at once to the front; international justice is hardly 
mentioned. She spends colossal sums on her secret 
service, so that German spies are become a by-word and 
a joke. In the recognized sport of international treach- 
ery, she goes frequently beyond the rules of the game. 
Her Emperor, her Imperial Chancellor, and other peo- 
ple in the highest positions of responsibility, expound 



34 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

her ambitions and her schemes in language which would 
only be used by an irresponsible journalist in England 
or France. They discuss, for instance, whether the time 
has come for conquering France once more, and how 
best they can " bleed her white" and reduce her to im- 
potence. They explain that Bismarck and his generation 
have made Germany the strongest Power on the Conti- 
nent. "The will of Germany is now respected" in Eu- 
rope; it rests with the present Emperor to make it 
similarly respected throughout the world. "Germany's 
world-future lies on the sea." They discuss whether they 
can build up a fleet strong enough to fight and beat the 
British fleet without Great Britain interfering. They 
discuss in public how many colonies, and which, they 
will leave to Great Britain when the great "Day " comes. 
They express regret, combined, so far as one can make 
out, with a little genuine surprise, that the "brutal 
egoism of Great Britain" should raise any objection to 
this plan and they hope — openly and publicly — that 
her well-known weakness and cowardice will make her 
afraid to act. Since Great Britain has a vast number of 
Mohammedan subjects, who may possibly be stirred to 
disaffection, the German Emperor proclaims to "the 
three hundred million Mohammedans who live scattered 
over the globe" that whenever they need him, the 
German Emperor will be their friend. And this in 1898, 
in the middle of profound peace! Professors in German 
Universities lecture on the best way of destroying the 
British Empire, and the officers' messes in the German 
Navy regularly drink the toast of "The Day." There is 
no need to explain what Day. The curious thing is that 
these plans are all expounded in public speeches and 
books- — strange books, in which the average civilized 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 35 

sense of international justice or common honesty seems 
to have been left out of account, as well as the sense 
of common political prudence; in which the schemes 
of an accomplished burglar are expounded with the 
candour of a child. 

And all through this period, in which she plots against 
her neighbours and tells them she is plotting, Germany 
lives in a state of alarm. Her neighbours are so un- 
friendly! Their attitude may be correct, but it is not 
trustful and cordial. The Imperial Chancellor, Von 
Bulow, explains in his book that there was only one 
time when he really breathed freely. It was in 1909, 
when Austria, his ally, annexed by violence and against 
her pledges the two Slav provinces of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina. All Europe was indignant, especially Russia, 
the natural protector of the Slavs, and England, the 
habitual champion of small nationalities. But Germany 
put down her foot. The Kaiser " appeared in shining 
armour beside his ally," and no Power dared to intervene. 
Germany was in the wrong. Every one knew she was 
in the wrong. It was just that fact that was so comfort- 
ing. Her army was big enough, her navy was big enough, 
and for the moment the timid creature felt secure. 

Lastly, we must remember that it is Germany who 
started the race for armaments; and that while Russia 
has pressed again and again for a general limitation of 
armies, and England made proposal after proposal for 
a general limitation of navies, Germany has steadily 
refused to entertain any such idea. 

Now, for some time it was possible to minimize all 
these danger-signals, and, for my own part, I have al- 
ways tried to minimize them. There are militarists and 



36 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

Jingoes in every country; our own have often been bad 
enough. The German sort seemed unusually blatant, 
but it did not follow that they carried their country 
with them. The Kaiser, always impulsive, said on the 
whole more friendly things than unfriendly things. At 
any rate, it seemed wiser and more statesmanlike to 
meet provocation with good temper, and to try by per- 
sistent friendliness to encourage all the more liberal and 
reasonable elements in German public life. This policy 
seemed possible until the July of the present year. Then 
certain facts were forced upon us. They are all detailed 
in the White Paper and the other diplomatic correspond- 
ence. 

We suddenly found that Germany and Austria, or 
some conspiring parties in Germany and Austria, had 
arranged for a great stroke, like that of 1909 on a larger 
scale. It was so obviously aggressive in its nature that 
their ally, Italy, the third Power in the Triple Alliance, 
formally refused to act with them. The Alliance only 
applied to a defensive war. The time had been carefully 
chosen. England was supposed to be on the verge of 
a civil war in Ireland and a new mutiny in India. 
France had just been through a military scandal, in 
which it appeared that the army was short of boots and 
ammunition. Russia, besides a general strike and in- 
ternal troubles, was re-arming her troops with a new 
weapon, and the process was only half through. Even 
the day was chosen. It was in a week when nearly all 
the ambassadors were away from their posts, taking 
their summer holiday — the English Ambassador at 
Berlin, the Russian Ambassadors at Berlin and Vienna, 
the Austrian Foreign Minister, the French Prime Min- 
ister, the Serbian Prime Minister, the Kaiser himself, 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 37 

and others who might have used a restraining influence 
on the schemes of the war party. Suddenly, without a 
word to any outside Power, Austria issued an ultimatum 
to Serbia, to be answered in forty-eight hours. Seventeen 
of these hours had elapsed before the other Powers were 
informed, and war was declared on Serbia before all 
the ambassadors could get back to their posts. The 
leading statesmen of Europe sat up all night trying for 
conciliation, for arbitration, even for bare delay. At the 
last moment, when the Austrian Foreign Minister had 
returned, and had consented to a basis for conversations 
with Russia, there seemed to be a good chance that 
peace might be preserved; but at that moment Ger- 
many launched her ultimatum at Russia and France, and 
Austria was already invading Serbia. In twenty-four 
hours, six European Powers were at war. 

Now, the secret history of this strange intrigue is not 
yet known. It will not be known for fifty years or so. 
It is impossible to believe that the German nation 
would have backed up the plot, if they had understood 
it. It is difficult to think that the Kaiser would; and 
the Austrian Foreign Minister, when once he returned,, 
tried to undo the work of his subordinates. But some^ 
how the war parties in Germany and Austria got the 
upper hand for one fatal week, and have managed to 
drag their countries after them. 

We saw, as Italy had seen, that Germany had pre- 
arranged the war. We saw her breaking her treaties 
and overrunning little Belgium, as her ally was trampling 
on little Serbia. We remembered her threats against 
ourselves. And at this very time, as if to deepen our 
suspicions, she made us what has been justly termed an 
" infamous proposal," that if we would condone her 



38 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

treaty-breaking now, she would have an " understand- 
ing" with us afterwards. 

Suppose we had not been bound by our treaty to 
Belgium, or even our natural and informal friendship 
with France: what could we have done? I wish to take 
no low ground; I wish to face the question from the 
point of view of a statesman who owes a duty to his own 
country and a duty to Europe. 

The one thing which we could not have done, in my 
opinion, was to repudiate our responsibility. We are 
a very strong Power, one of the strongest in the world, 
and here, under our eyes and within range of our guns, 
a thing was being done which menaced every living 
creature in Europe. The one thing that no statesman 
could possibly do was to say: "This is no concern of 
ours. We will go our ways as usual." It was perfectly 
possible to stand aside and proclaim our neutrality. 
But — apart from questions of honour — to proclaim 
neutrality was quite as grave a step as to proclaim 
war. Let no man imagine that he can escape blood- 
guiltiness by standing still while murder is committed 
before his eyes. 

I will not argue here what the right decision would 
have been. It depends, unlike the point of honour, on 
a careful balancing of evidence and consequences, and 
scarcely any one in the country except the Government 
has sufficient knowledge to make the balance. For my 
own part, I should have started with a strong predilec- 
tion for peace, even a fragmentary peace, but should 
ultimately have been guided chiefly by the public men 
whom I most trust. But, as things fell out, our Govern- 
ment was not forced to make a decision on this difficult 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 39 

ground at all, because Germany took a further step 
which made the whole situation clear. Her treatment 
of Belgium not only roused our passionate indignation, 
but compelled us either to declare war or to break our 
pledged word. I incline, however, to think that our 
whole welfare is so vitally dependent on the observance 
of public law and the rights of nations, and would have 
been so terribly endangered by the presence of Germany 
in a conqueror's mood at Ostend and Zeebrugge, not to 
speak of Dunkirk and Calais, that in this case mere self- 
preservation called us to fight. I do not venture to lay 
any stress on the hopes which we may entertain for the 
building up of a better Europe after the war, a Europe 
which shall have settled its old feuds and devised some 
great machinery for dealing with new difficulties as they 
arise, on a basis of justice and concord, not of intrigue 
and force. By all means let us hope, let us work, for 
that rebuilding; but it will be a task essentially difficult 
when it comes; and the very beginning of it lies far 
away, separated from the present time and the immediate 
task by many terrific hazards. We have no right to 
soothe our consciences concerning the war with profes- 
sions of the fine and generous things that we are going 
to do afterwards. Doubtless Germany was going to 
make us all good and happy when she was once sure of 
our obedience. For the moment we can think only of 
our duty, and need of self-preservation. And I believe 
that in this matter the two run together: our interest 
coincides with our honour. 

It is curious how often this is the case. It is one of 
the old optimistic beliefs of nineteenth-century Liberal- 
ism, and one which is often ridiculed, that a nation's 



40 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

duty generally does coincide with its interest. No doubt 
one can find abundant exceptions, but I believe that in 
the main, for nations as for individuals, real palpable 
conscious dishonesty or wickedness is exceedingly un- 
profitable. This is a more interesting fact than it looks 
at first sight. 

There are many poisons which are simply so nasty 
that, undisguised, they cannot be swallowed. No power 
could induce a man or dog to sip or lap a tablespoonful 
of nicotine or prussic acid. You might coax the dog 
with future bones, you might persuade the man that the 
medicine was just what his health needed; but their 
swallowing muscles would refuse to act. Doubtless, in 
the scheme of nature, the disgust is a provision which 
saves the race. Now I cannot help suspecting that, 
much more faintly and more fallibly, the vehement and 
invincible refusal with which man's sense of honour or 
religion meets certain classes of proposal, which look 
profitable enough on the surface, is just such another 
warning of nature against poison. In all these cases dis- 
cussed above, the Christian's martyrdom, the honour- 
able man's refusal to desert his companions, it was not 
true to say, as we seemed to say, that advantage was 
on one side and honour on the other. Dishonour would 
have brought with it a subtler and more lasting disad- 
vantage, greater in its sum than immediate death. If 
the Christian had sacrificed to the idol, what would his 
life have been afterwards? Perhaps his friends would 
have rejected his example and been martyred; he would 
be alone in his shame. Perhaps they would have followed 
his example, and through him the whole band of the 
" faithful" have betrayed Christ. Not a very enviable 
choice either way. Without any tall talk or high pro- 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 41 

fessions, would it not quite certainly be better for the 
whole Church and probably for the man himself that 
he should defy his persecutors and die? And does not 
the same now hold for any patriotic Belgian or Serbian 
who has had a voice in his country's action? The choice 
was not on the one hand honour and misery, on the 
other dishonour and a happy life. It was on the one 
hand honour and great physical suffering, on the other 
hand dishonour and a life subtly affected by that dis- 
honour in a thousand unforeseen ways. I do not under- 
rate the tremendous importance of mere physical suffer- 
ing; I do not underrate the advantage of living as long 
a life as is conveniently possible. But men must die 
some time, and, if we dare really to confess the truth, 
the thing that most of us in our hearts long for, the thing 
which either means ultimate happiness or else is greater 
and dearer to men than happiness, is the power to do our 
duty and, when we die, to have done it. The behaviour 
of our soldiers and sailors proves it. " The last I saw of 
him was on the after bridge, doing well" The words come 
in the official report made by the captain of one of our 
lost cruisers. But that is the kind of epitaph nearly all 
men crave for themselves, and the wisest men, I think, 
even for their nation. 

And if we accept this there will follow further conse- 
quences. War is not all evil. It is a true tragedy, which 
must have nobleness and triumph in it as well as dis- 
aster. . . . This is dangerous ground. The subject lends 
itself to foolish bombast, especially when accompanied 
by a lack of true imagination. We must not begin to 
praise war without stopping to reflect on the hundreds 
of thousands of human beings involved in such horrors 



42 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

of pain and indignity that, if here in our ordinary hours 
we saw one man so treated, the memory would sicken us 
to the end of our lives; we must remember the horses, 
remember the gentle natures brutalized by hardship and 
filth, and the once decent persons transformed by rage 
and fear into devils of cruelty. But, when we have real- 

" / ized that, we may venture to see in this wilderness of 
evil some oases of extraordinary good. 

These men who are engaged in what seems like a vast 
public crime ought, one would think, to fall to something 
below their average selves, below the ordinary standard 
of common folk. But do they? Day after day come 
streams of letters from the front, odd stories, fragments 
of diaries, and the like, full of the small, intimate facts 

yl which reveal character; and almost with one accord they 
show that these men have not fallen, but risen. No 
doubt there has been some selection in the letters; to 
some extent the writers repeat what they wish to have 
remembered, and say nothing of what they wish to for- 
get. But, when all allowances are made, one cannot read 
the letters and the dispatches without a feeling of al- 
most passionate admiration for the men about whom 
they tell. They were not originally a set of men chosen 
for their peculiar qualities. They were just our ordinary 
fellow citizens, the men you meet on a crowded pave- 
ment. There was nothing to suggest that their conduct 
in common life was better than that of their neighbours. 
Yet now, under the stress of war, having a duty before 
them that is clear and unquestioned and terrible, they 
are daily doing nobler things than we most of us have 
ever had the chance of doing, things which we hardly 
dare hope that we might be able to do. I am not think- 
ing of the rare achievements that win a V.C. or a Cross 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 43 

of the Legion of Honour, but of the common necessary 
heroism of the average men : the long endurance, the de- 
voted obedience, the close-banded life in which self- 
sacrifice is the normal rule, and all men may be forgiven 
except the man who saves himself at the expense of his 
comrade. I think of the men who share their last bis- 
cuits with a starving peasant, who help wounded com- 
rades through days and nights of horrible retreat, who 
give their lives to save mates or officers. 1 Or I think again 

1 For example, to take two stories out of a score : — 

1. Relating his experienoes to a pressman, Lance-Corporal Edmond- 
son, of the Royal Irish Lancers, said: "There is absolutely no doubt 
that our men are still animated by the spirit of old. I came on a couple 
of men of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders who had been cut 
off at Mons. One was badly wounded, but his companion had stuck 
by him all the time in a country swarming with Germans, and though 
they had only a few biscuits between them they managed to pull 
through until we picked them up. I pressed the unwounded man to 
tell me how they managed to get through the four days on six biscuits, 
but he always got angry and told me to shut up. I fancy he went 
without anything, and gave the biscuits to the wounded man. They 
were offered shelter many times by French peasants, but they were so 
afraid of bringing trouble on these kind folk that they would never 
accept shelter. One night they lay out in the open all through a heavy 
downpour, though there was a house at hand where they could have 
had shelter. Uhlans were on the prowl, and they would not think of 
compromising the French people, who would have been glad to help 
them." 

2. The following story of an unidentified private of the Royal Irish 
Regiment, who deliberately threw away his life in order to warn his 
comrades of an ambush, is told by a wounded corporal of the West 
Yorkshire Regiment now in hospital in Woolwich: — 

"The fight in which I got hit was in a little village near to Rheims. 
We were working in touch with the French corps on our left, and early 
one morning we were sent ahead to this village, which we had reason 
to believe was clear of the enemy. On the outskirts we questioned a 
French lad, but he seemed scared and ran away. We went on through 
the long, narrow street, and just as we were in sight of the end the 
figure of a man dashed out from a farmhouse on the right. Imme- 
diately the rifles began to crack in front, and the poor chap fell dead 
before he reached us. 

"He was one of our men, a private of the Royal Irish Regiment. 
We learned that he had been captured the previous day by a maraud- 
ing party of German cavalry, and had been held a prisoner at the 






44 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

of the expressions on faces that I have seen or read 
about, something alert and glad and self-respecting in 
the eyes of those who are going to the front, and even of 
the wounded who are returning. "Never once," writes 
one correspondent, "not once since I came to France 
have I seen among the soldiers an angry face or heard 
an angry word. . . . They are always quiet, orderly, and 
wonderfully cheerful." And no one who has followed 
the war need be told of their heroism. I do not forget 
the thousands left on the battlefield to die, or the groan- 
ing of the wounded sounding all day between the crashes 
of the guns. But there is a strange deep gladness as 
well. "One feels an extraordinary freedom," says a 
young Russian officer, "in the midst of death, with the 
bullets whistling round. The same with all the soldiers. 
The wounded all want to get well and return to the fight. 
They fight with tears of joy in their eyes." 

Human nature is a mysterious thing, and man finds 
his weal and woe not in the obvious places. To have 
something before you, clearly seen, which you know 
you must do, and can do, and will spend your utmost 
strength and perhaps your life in doing, that is one form 
at least of very high happiness, and one that appeals — 
the facts prove it — not only to saints and heroes, but 
to average men. Doubtless the few who are wise enough 

farm where the Germans were in ambush for us. He tumbled to their 
game, and though he knew that if he made the slightest sound they 
would kill him, he decided to make a dash to warn us of what was in 
store. He had more than a dozen bullets in him, and there was not the 
slightest hope for him. We carried him into a house until the fight was 
over, and then we buried him next day with military honours. His 
identification disk and everything else was missing, so that we could 
only put over his grave the tribute that was paid to a greater: 'He 
saved others; himself he could not save.' There wasn't a dry eye 
among us when we laid him to rest in that little village." 



HOW CAN WAR EVER BE RIGHT? 45 

and have enough imagination may find opportunity for 
that same happiness in everyday life, but in war ordi- 
nary men find it. This is the inward triumph which lies 
at the heart of the great tragedy. 



Ill 

HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 1 

{February, 1915) 

At the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, 
close to the entrance, you can buy for the sum of four- 
pence a most fascinating little book on "The Fossil Re- 
mains of Man." It is official and, I presume, authorita- 
tive. And it tells how, in very remote times, before there 
was any South Kensington Museum, or any England, 
or, I believe, in the strict sense, any Europe, there lived 
in swampy forests in various parts of the world, troops 
of little lemur-like tree-dwellers. They were, I suppose, 
rather like small monkeys, but much prettier. They had 
nice fur, good prehensile tails, and effective teeth. Then 
there fell upon them, or some of them, a momentous 
change, a hypertrophy or overdevelopment of one part 
of the body. This kind of special increase, the author 
tells us, seldom stops till it becomes excessive. With the 
lemurs it was the brain which began to grow. It grew 
and grew, both in size and in complexity. The rest of 
the body suffered in consequence. The fur became 
mangy and disappeared. The prehensile tails wasted 
away. The teeth ceased to be useful as weapons. And 
in the end, ladies and gentlemen, after incalculable ages, 
here we are! 

Now these lemurs had certain instincts and habits of 
life. Let us define our terms. By an instinct I mean, 

1 Lecture at Bedford College. 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 47 

following the exposition of Dr. McDougall, an innate 
psycho-physical disposition to notice objects of a certain 
class, to feel about them in certain ways and to act corre- 
spondingly. They would notice an enemy, hate him, and 
spit at him; notice an object that was good to eat, desire 
it, and eat it. They made love, they protected their 
young, they defended their group against other groups. 
And primitive man inherited, with modifications, their 
instincts, and we have similarly inherited his. Some of 
them were generally desirable, and are consequently 
admitted and encouraged; others were generally un- 
desirable, and have been habitually denied and sup- 
pressed in our conscious life, only to break out in dreams, 
in fits of insanity or passion, or more subtly in self- 
deception. But, suppressed or unsuppressed, man's in- 
stincts form the normal motive force in his life, though 
the direction of that force may from time to time be 
controlled by conscious reason. 

From this point of view I wish to consider what has 
happened to us in England since August 4, 1914. For 
that something has happened is quite clear. There is an 
inward change, which some people praise and some 
blame. There is a greater seriousness in life, less com- 
plaining, less obvious selfishness, and more hardihood. 
There is a universal power of self-sacrifice whose exist- 
ence we never suspected before: on every side young 
men are ready to go and face death for their country, 
and parents are ready to let them go. There is more 
brotherhood and more real democracy; and at the same 
time, a quality of which we stood in much need, far 
more discipline and obedience. 

This makes a very strong case on the good side. Yet, 



48 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

on the other, you will find generally that reformers and 
idealists are disheartened. Friends of peace, of women's 
causes, of legal reform, of the mitigation of cruelty to 
animals, are all reduced to something like impotence. 
One hears the statement that "there is no Christianity 
left." The very increase of power and devotion which 
has occurred is directed, so some say, to the service of 
evil. The same process has taken place in Germany, and 
has there apparently reached a higher degree of inten- 
sity. To leave aside its more insane manifestations, a 
Danish friend sends me the following quotation from 
a German religious poet, much admired in evangelical 
circles: "We have become the nation of wrath. . . . We 
accomplish the almighty will of God, and will vengefully 
wreak the demands of His righteousness on the godless, 
filled with sacred fury. . . . We are bound together like a 
scourge of punishment whose name is War. We flame 
like lightning. Our wounds blossom like rose-gardens at 
the gate of heaven. Thanks be to Thee, God Almighty! 
Thy wrathful awakening does away with our sins. As the 
iron in Thy hand we smite all our enemies on the cheek- 
bone." Another poet, a clergyman, prays that the Ger- 
mans may not fall into the temptation of carrying out 
the judgements of God's wrath with too great mildness. 
Now the state of mind which these poems reveal — and 
I dare say they could be paralleled or nearly paralleled 
in England — is compatible with great self-sacrifice and 
heroism, but it is certainly not what one would call 
wholesome. 

In order to understand this change as a whole, it is 
necessary to analyze it; and I would venture to suggest 
that, in the main, it consists simply in an immense stimu- 
lation of the herd or group instincts, though, of course, 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 49 

other instincts are also involved. For the present, let us 
neither praise nor blame, but simply analyze. At the 
end we may have some conclusion to draw. 

Man is by nature a gregarious animal and is swayed 
by herd instincts, as a gregarious animal must be; but of 
course they are greatly modified. Outside mankind we 
find these instincts in various grades of development. 
They show strongest in ants and bees, with their com- 
munal life of utter self-sacrifice, utter ruthlessness. I see 
that Professor Julian Huxley, in his book on "The 
Individual in the Animal Kingdom," doubts whether 
among ants the single ant or the whole ant-heap is really 
the individual. I remember a traveller in northern Aus- 
tralia narrating how he once saw a procession of white 
ants making towards his camp, and to head them off 
sprinkled across their line of advance a train of blue- 
stone, or sulphate of copper. And instead of turning 
aside, each ant as he came up threw himself on the 
horribly corrosive stuff and devoured it till he fell 
dead; and presently the main army marched on over a 
line consisting no longer of bluestone, but of dead 
ants. 

The instinct is less overpowering in cattle, horses, 
wolves, etc. Certain wild cattle in South Africa are 
taken by Galton as types of it. In ordinary herd life they 
show no interest in one another, much less any mutual 
affection. But if one is taken out of the herd and put by 
himself he pines, and when he is taken back to the herd 
he shoves and nozzles to the very centre of it. Wolves, 
again, will fight for their pack, but not from mutual 
affection. If the pack is not threatened, they will readily 
fight and kill one another. A dog in domesticated condi- 
tions is especially interesting. He has been taken away 



50 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

from his pack, but he retains his fundamental habits. 
He barks to call his mates on every emergency, even if 
barking frightens his prey away. He sniffs at every- 
thing when he is out walking, because he has wanted so 
long to find his way home to the lost pack. His real pack 
is now artificial, grouped round his master. It will take 
in his master's friends and house-companions, including 
quite possibly various animals such as cats and rabbits. 
Meantime he rejects the strange man and cheerfully kills 
the strange cat or rabbit. His delightful friendliness and 
sympathy are of course due to his herd habits. A cat 
has no herd. She has always " walked alone." 

Now man satisfies his herd instinct by many groups, 
mainly artificial. Like the dog, he may take in other 
animals. In ordinary life the group of which he is most 
conscious is his social class, especially if it is threatened in 
any way. Clergymen, landowners, teachers, coal-miners 
tend, as the phrase is, to hang together. They have the 
same material interests and the same habits of fife. 
Again, there may be local groups, counties or villages, 
or groups dependent on ideas and beliefs, a church, a 
party in politics, a clique in art. But of all groups, far 
the strongest when it is once roused is the nation, and it 
is the nation that is roused now. r 

Normally men of science form a group, so do theolo- 
gians. But now they feel no longer as men of science or 
theologians, they feel as Englishmen or Germans. I see 
that the Archbishop of Munich has expressed a doubt 
whether "any appreciable number of Belgian priests' ' 
have been " irregularly killed" by German soldiers. 
There is an absence of class feeling about this remark 
which few clergymen could attain in peace time. I see 
that even the German Jesuits are sharply differing from 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 51 

the rest of the Jesuits, an order famous throughout his- 
tory for its extreme cohesion and discipline. The only- 
bodies that have at all asserted themselves against the 
main current of feeling in the various nations have been 
a few isolated Intellectuals and some small groups of 
International Socialists. It was easier for these last, since 
with them Internationalism was not only a principle, but 
a habit, and, besides, they were accustomed in ordinary 
life to be against their own government and to differ 
from their neighbours. 

In the main, what has happened is very simple. In all 
wild herds we find that the strength of this instinct de- 
pends upon the need for it. As soon as the herd is in 
danger, the herd instinct flames up in passion to defend 
it. The members of the herd first gather together, and 
then fight or fly. This is what has happened to us. Our 
herd is in danger, and our natural herd instinct is 
aflame. Let us notice certain different ways in which it 
operates. 

First, the herd unites. Wolves who are quarrelling 
cease when menaced by a common enemy. Cattle and 
horses draw together. We in England find ourselves 
a band of brothers; and the same of course occurs 
in Germany. Indeed, it probably occurs even more 
strongly there, since all herd emotions there tend to be 
passionately expressed and officially encouraged. Those 
who are ordinarily separate have drawn together. Can- 
ada, Australia, India, even Crown colonies like Fiji, 
seem to be feeling a common emotion. A year or so ago 
one might see in the advertisements of employment in 
Canadian newspapers the words, "No English need 
apply." You would not find them now. Even the 
United States have drawn close to us. Of course in part 



52 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

this is due to the goodness of our cause, to sympathy 
with the wrongs of Belgium, and the like. Most neutrals 
are somewhat on our side. But herd instinct is clearly 
present; or why do the German- Americans side with the 
Germans? 

Even those who are ordinarily at strife have drawn 
together. Before the war our whole people seemed at 
strife with itself, how far from natural causes and how 
far from definite intrigue on the part of Germany history 
will doubtless show. We had the Militant Suffragists, we 
had an utterly extraordinary number of strikes and a 
great deal of rebellion against trade-union leaders, we 
had trouble in India, terrific threats in Ireland. And on 
the whole, now these various enemies have "made it up." 
Of course it was much harder for them than for those 
who were merely separated by distance. There were 
serious obstacles in the way; habits of anger, habits of 
suspicion; often the mere routine of party attack which 
comes natural to small groups in strong opposition to a 
government. As a journalist said to me: "I mostly keep 
the truce all right; but sometimes, when one is tired and 
has nothing particular to say, one drops into abusing 
McKenna. ,, 

The chief problem that arises in this general drawing 
together is the problem of fidelity to the lesser herd. 
Sometimes there is no clash between the lesser and the 
greater. A man's emotion towards his family, his asso- 
ciates, his native district, causes as a rule no clash. On 
the contrary, it is usually kindled and strengthened by 
some sort of analogy or some emotional infection. The 
emotions of loyalty, of love to one's neighbours and sur- 
roundings, are all stirred; and the family emotions in 
particular, being themselves very ancient and deep- 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 53 

rooted in our instinctive nature, have grown stronger 
together with those of the herd. 

But often there is a clash. For instance, an individual 
who has recently been in Germany and made close friends 
there will, out of loyalty to this friendship, rebel against 
the current anti-German passion, and so become "pro- 
German." I mean by " pro-German," not one who wishes 
the Germans to win, — I know of none such, — but one 
who habitually interprets doubtful questions in a way 
sympathetic to Germany. Again, there are a few people 
who, on one ground or another, disapproved of the 
declaration of war. They are attacked and maligned: 
their friends naturally stand by them. The whole group 
hits back angrily and becomes, in the same sense, pro- 
German. Then there are people who are influenced by 
a peculiar form of pugnacity which is often miscalled 
"love of justice." It is really a habit of irritation at ex- 
cess which finds vent not in justice, but in counter-excess. 
"So-and-so is overpraised; for Heaven's sake, let us 
bring him down a peg ! Every fool I meet is emotional- 
ized about the German treatment of Belgium; can we 
not somehow — somehow — show that no harm was 
done, or that Belgium deserved it, or at least that it was 
all the fault of the Russians? " People of these types and 
others form, some generous and some perverse, both 
here and in Germany, a protesting small herd in reaction 
against the great herd. Thus the herd draws together, 
though lesser and protesting herds within it may do the 
same. 

Secondly, in time of danger the individual subordi- 
nates himself to the herd. He ceases to make claims upon 
it, he desires passionately to serve it. He is miserable 



54 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

and unsatisfied if there is no public work found for him. 
Discipline consequently becomes easy and automatic. I 
know of one case where a number of recruits in a certain 
new regiment were drawn from a local trade union of 
pugnacious traditions. One of them was punished for 
something or other. The rest instinctively proposed to 
strike, but even as they proposed it found themselves in 
the grip of a stronger instinct. They hesitated for an 
instant and then obeyed orders. Again, I seem to have 
noticed that there is in most people an active desire to 
be ordered about. We like a drill-sergeant to speak to us 
severely, much as you speak to a dog which has not yet 
been naughty but looks as if he meant to be. In ordi- 
nary life, when a man has to obey and submit, he feels 
small. The action is accompanied by what Mr. Mc- 
Dougall calls " negative self -f eeling." But now, it seems, 
we actually have a sense of pride when we are ordered 
about. It makes us feel that we are really serving. 

We may notice here a curious side-movement, a 
counter-action to the main stream making for union. 
Such counter-actions are, of course, always to be ex- 
pected and need cause no surprise. Why is it that, 
among these great steady forces of union and mutual 
trust, we have sudden flashes of the very opposite, es- 
pecially of wild suspicions of the herd-leaders? I do not 
mean mere spy-mania. That is simple enough, a morbid 
excess of a perfectly natural feeling directed against the 
common enemy. You desire passionately to capture a 
real German spy; and, since you cannot find one, you 
make up a bogus one and capture him. I mean a similar 
mania, though much weaker and rarer, directed against 
the herd itself: the semi-insane suspicions of Prince 
Louis of Battenberg, of Lord Haldane, and of persons 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 55 

even more exalted. Partly, these impulses are the re- 
mains of old quarrels in feeble minds. But partly they 
have a real biological origin. For while, in ordinary 
dangers, the safety of the future race depends on the 
individuals serving and trusting their herd, there are 
moments when the only chance of safety lies in their 
deserting and rejecting it. If once the herd is really con- 
quered and in the power of the enemy, then the cry must 
be "Sauve qui peut," and the panic which is generally 
disastrous is now a protection. Thus these small cases 
of panic, though practically unimportant, are psycho- 
logically interesting and have their proper evolutionist 
explanation. 

So far we have found, first, that the herd draws to- 
gether, and next, that the individual subordinates him- 
self to the herd. Thirdly, it seems clear that this closer 
herd union has an effect upon the emotions, and a two- 
fold effect. As all readers of psychology know, herd 
union intensifies all the emotions which are felt in com- 
mon. The effect is so strong and so striking that some 
writers have treated it as a kind of mystery and de- 
scribed it in language that is almost mythological. But 
there does not seem to be anything inexplicable in the 
matter. Emotion is infectious. Each member of a herd 
which is in the grasp of some emotion is himself in a 
" suggestible" state and is also exerting "suggestion" 
upon his neighbours. They are all directly stimulating 
his emotion and he theirs. And doubtless we should also 
remember that, herd emotion being itself a very old and 
deep-rooted animal affection, its stimulation has prob- 
ably a sympathetic effect on all kinds of similar dis- 
turbances, such as fear and anger and animal desires of 
various sorts. 



56 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

Furthermore, herd union often gives the suppressed 
subconscious forces their chance of satisfaction. Hence 
come the atrocities committed by crowds. Some dor- 
mant desire, existing in your nature but normally sup- 
pressed, is suddenly encouraged by suggestion. You see 
a look in your neighbour's face, and he in yours; and in 
a flash you both know what that look means. You dare 
to own a feeling which, in your normal condition, you 
would have strangled unborn. Suppressed instinct calls 
to instinct across the gulf of personality, and the in- 
famous thing is half done. For the herd, besides tempt- 
ing you, also offers you a road of impunity. You can 
repudiate responsibility afterwards. It is never exactly 
you that really did the thing. It is the crowd that did 
it, and the crowd has now ceased to exist. M. Len6tre, 
in his studies of the French Revolution, has commented 
on the somewhat ghastly fact that in moments of herd 
excitement people on the verge of lunacy, people touched 
by persecution mania, by suspicion mania, by actual 
homicidal mania, are apt to become leaders and inspire 
confidence. The same phenomenon has been noticed in 
certain revolutionary movements in Russia. 

In England, fortunately, there has been so far almost 
no field for this kind of dangerous herd excitement. 
There has been of course some ferocity in speech, a com- 
paratively harmless safety-valve for bad feelings, and in 
some persons a preferable alternative to apoplexy; but 
no violent actions and, I think, among decent people, 
extraordinarily little vindictiveness. 

But herd union does not intensify all emotions. It 
intensifies those which are felt in common, but it actually 
deadens and shuts down those which are only felt by the 
individual. The herd is, as a matter of fact, habitually 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 57 

callous towards the sufferings of its individual mem- 
bers, and it infects each member with its own callous- 
ness. To take a trifling instance, a friend writes to me 
thus: "I discovered one day on a march that my boot 
was hurting me; after an hour or so it became obvious 
that my foot was bleeding. In ordinary times I should 
have made a fuss and insisted on sympathy, and cer- 
tainly not gone on walking for several miles. But as it 
was, moving in a steady mass of people who were uninter- 
ested in my boots, and I in theirs, I marched on without 
making any remark or even feeling much." 

The ramifications of this herd callousness are very 
curious and intricate. It acts even with fear, that most 
contagious of emotions. The herd deadens the fears of 
the individual so long as they do not become real herd 
fears. Untrained troops will advance in close masses. It 
needs good troops to advance individually in open order. 
The close masses are much more dangerous and the 
open order less so, but in the close mass the herd is all 
round you, buttressing you and warming you, and it 
deadens your private fear. It may also be that there is 
here some hereditary instinct at work, derived from a 
time when the act of huddling together was a real pro- 
tection, as it is with sheep and cattle attacked by wolves. 

If this herd callousness acts with fear, it acts of course 
far more with scruples or pities. The first scruple or 
ruth or criticism of the herd must rise in the breast of 
some individual. If, by good luck, at the same moment 
it occurs to some dozen other men, it has a chance of 
asserting itself. Otherwise there is only the single unit 
standing up, in his infinite weakness, against the great 
herd. The scruple is silenced and dies. 

Of course, in actual warfare this callousness is im- 



58 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

mensely increased by the nature of the work which the 
combatants are doing, and the immense change in their 
habitual standard of expectation. You cannot always 
be pitying people, or you would never get on with your 
business. A friend of mine, a clever and kindly man, told 
me how he and his men, after a long spell in the trenches, 
utterly tired and chilled and dropping with sleep, had 
at last got into their billets — a sort of warm cellar 
where they could just squeeze in. They heard the 
scream of shrapnel sweeping the street outside, tand 
some soldiers of another regiment and nationality ran 
up to the door begging for admittance and shelter. With 
one voice, so my friend said, he and his men growled at 
them and slammed the door in their faces. It was their 
own cellar, and these people were intruders. And they 
shut them out into the shrapnel much as, in ordinary 
circumstances, they would perhaps have felt justified in 
shutting them out into the rain. The strangest devel- 
opment of all is perhaps the disregard of the herd for 
its wounded, and the readiness of the wounded them- 
selves to be so disregarded. Of course there are abun- 
dant cases of the opposite sort, where individuals show 
the utmost regard for the wounded, risk their lives for 
them, and count no labour too hard for their sake. But 
I have certainly met with well-authenticated stories, 
notably of incidents in the German and Japanese and 
Turkish armies, which seem to take one back to some 
rather primitive instincts. The true animal herd hates 
its wounded and kills them; cattle, wolves, porpoises, 
every herd of gregarious animals does the same. Of 
course it hates them. They not only tend to hamper its 
movements, but they present vividly to its eyes and 
senses the very thing that it most loathes — its own 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 59 

blood and pain. And one finds also curious instances 
where the wounded man himself is so absorbed in the 
general herd emotion that he insists, even angrily, on 
being left alone. 

Thus, under the influence of herd union, common 
emotions are intensified, individual emotions deadened. 

Now thought, unlike emotion, is markedly individual 
and personal. It is not infectious. It is communicated by 
articulate language. The herd growls, cries, sobs, some- 
times laughs; but it finds speech very difficult. Again, 
thought is critical, and the herd wants unanimity, not 
criticism. Consequently herd union deadens thought. 

True, the herd leader must think and plan, and the 
herd will obey him. In an organized army, where dis- 
cipline and organization powerfully counteract many of 
the normal herd characteristics, thought sits enthroned 
and directs the whole mass. But it is a special kind of 
thought, under central control and devoted simply to 
attaining the purposes of the herd. Other thought is 
inhibited. 

For instance, if the herd is angry, it is quite simply 
angry with another herd. This state of mind is normal 
among savages and primitive men. Some one belonging 
to a tribe over the river has speared one of our cows, 
therefore we catch some other person belonging to a 
different tribe over the river and club him on the head. 
Herd justice is satisfied. It only sees things in herds. 
"The Germans" did so-and-so; therefore punish "the 
Germans": "the English" did so-and-so; therefore 
punish "the English." Whenever a herd is offended by 
some action, it is made happy by punishing as dramati- 
cally as possible several people who did not do it. Collec- 
tive anger, collective punishment, is always opposed to 



60 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

justice, because justice applies only to individuals. And 
again, the more angry a herd is, the less evidence it needs 
that there is due cause for its anger. Accuse a man of 
some irregularity in his accounts, and the herd will ex- 
pect to have the charge duly proved. But accuse him of 
having drenched little girls in paraffin and set fire to 
them, and the herd will very likely tear him — or some 
one else — to pieces at once without further evidence. 

By this process of killing out thought the herd sinks 
all its members in itself and assimilates them to an 
average. And this average is in some ways above but in 
most considerably below that of the average man in 
normal life. For it is that of the average man not think- 
ing but merely feeling. Only the leader has the function 
of thinking; hence his enormous and uncanny power. 

* 
Lastly, let us consider the effect of this herd union on 

religion. At first sight the answer would seem simple. 
Religion is a network of primitive collective emotions, 
and any stimulus which works upon such emotions is 
likely > by force of sympathy, to rouse religious emotion 
at the same time. At any rate some of the causes which 
have recently roused herd emotion in Europe are just 
the causes on which religious emotion is often said to be 
based. Man has been made to feel the presence of terrific 
forces over which he has no control. He has been taught, 
crudely and violently, his dependence on the unknown. 
On this line of reasoning, the religious life of the world 
should be greatly intensified. Yet there are serious con- 
siderations leading to the opposite conclusion. A world 
so mad and evil, however terrific, can hardly seem like 
the mirror in which to see God. I remember a dreadful 
incident in one of the consular reports of the Armenian 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 61 

massacres of 1895. At that time the universal dread and 
horror throughout Armenia sent most people praying 
day and night in the churches. But the report tells of 
one woman who sat by the road and refused to pray. 
"Do you not see what has happened?" she said. "God 
has gone mad. It is no use to pray to Him." I have 
myself talked on different days to two soldiers who gave 
vivid accounts of the hideous proceedings of the war 
in Flanders and of their own feelings of terror. Their 
accounts agreed, but the conclusions they drew were 
different. One man ended by saying with a sort of gasp: 
" It made you believe in God, I can tell you." The other, 
a more thoughtful man, said: "It made you doubt the 
existence of God." I think that the effect of this year 
of history will be to discourage the higher kind of reli- 
gion and immensely strengthen the lower. 

Let me try to analyze this conclusion more closely, 
and see what we mean in this context by "higher" and 
"lower." I hope that most of my hearers will agree with 
me, or at least not disagree violently, in assuming that 
the attributes which a man ascribes to his God are con- 
ditioned by his own mind, its limitations and its direc- 
tion. I could, if necessary, quote at least one Father of 
the Church in support of such a view. Thus the God 
whom a man worships is in some form a projection of his 
own personality. The respective Gods of a seventeenth- 
century Puritan, a Quaker, an Arab, a South-Sea Is- 
lander, will all differ as their worshippers differ, and the 
human qualities attributed to each will be projections 
of the emotions of the worshipper. Thus, the lower, and 
often the more passionate, religion will be directed to- 
wards a God who is a projection of the worshipper's own 
terrors and angers and desires and selfishness. The 



62 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

higher religion weaves its conception of God more out of 
its duties and its aspirations. To one of those soldiers 
whom I mentioned above God was evidently a Being 
of pure terror, fitly mirrored by the action of a host of 
high-explosive shells. To many people in great oppres- 
sion, again, God is almost an incarnation of their desire 
for revenge: let those who doubt it read the history of 
persecution. To others, an incarnation of Self. Some 
of you will have seen Mr. Dyson's finely tragic cartoon 
entitled "Alone with his God." It represents the 
Kaiser kneeling, a devout and fully armed figure, before 
another Kaiser exactly the same in dress and feature, 
but gigantic, august, enthroned amid the incense of 
ruined towns and burning churches, blindly staring and 
inexpressibly sad. It is a picture to ponder on. 

All these emotions, the self-worship, the hate, the 
revenge, the terror, will be stimulated, and so will the 
kind of religion that depends on them. The higher reli- 
gion, of which it is less easy to speak, which expresses 
itself in the love of righteousness, in the sense of one's 
own imperfection, in the aspiration after a better life and 
a world with more love in it . . . that sort of religion, I 
fear, will chiefly come in reaction. It cannot be the 
main flood. There is too much reflection in it, too much 
inhibition. The main flood of herd emotion will sweep 
over it for the time being, but it will not die. There is a 
strange life in the things of the spirit. 

I suggested at the beginning of this very rough and 
sketchy analysis that perhaps at the end we might be 
able to pass some definite moral judgement on the 
change which has taken place in us, and say whether it 
is a good or a bad change. But I fear that the suggestion 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 63 

has not been realized. Herd instinct in itself is neither 
good nor bad. It is simply part of the stuff of life, an 
immense store of vitality out of which both good and 
evil, extreme good and extreme evil, can spring. 

Thus it is impossible to say without qualification that 
we ought to rejoice in this stimulation of our herd 
instincts or that we ought rigorously to master and 
reject it. Neither alternative is sufficient. We must do 
this and not leave the other undone. We must accept 
gladly the quickened pulse, the new strength and cour- 
age, the sense of brotherhood, the spirit of discipline and 
self-sacrifice. All these things make life a finer thing. 
It is nothing against a particular emotion that mankind 
shares it with the ape and the tiger. Gorillas are famous 
for their family life, and tigresses are, up to their lights, 
exemplary mothers. As regards herd feeling in particular, 
we should realize that even in its most unthinking forms 
it generally makes a man kinder and more trustworthy 
towards his immediate neighbours and daily associates; 
the evil side of it comes into play much more rarely, 
since it is directed against the far-off alien herd which is 
seldom met or seen. 

And lastly, we should remember one piece of certain 
knowledge which is both immensely important and very 
difficult to apply: that thwarted instincts act like poison 
in human nature, and a normal and temperate satisfac- 
tion of instinct is what keeps it sweet and sane. At 
the present time, for instance, the people whose minds 
have turned sour and vicious are almost always those 
who can neither fight nor serve. The fighters and doc- 
tors and nurses and public servants — as a rule their 
herd desire is satisfied, and they do their work with 
fervour and without bitterness. 



64 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

Yet, after all, we are thinking beings. If we acknowl- 
edge our instincts, we need not worship them. Thinking 
itself is both an instinct and a form of public service, and 
it is our business to watch ourselves. We must see that 
this fresh force which we feel within us is not wrongly- 
directed, and that the higher and gentler elements of life 
are not swamped by this new strong wine. Millions of 
men throughout Europe are, without stint or question, 
offering all that is in them to the service of their coun- 
tries and the command of their leaders. We must see, 
so far as lies in our power, that we do not abuse that 
heroic blindness. And, among us who remain at home, 
we must see as far as possible that the normal texture 
of life is not lowered or coarsened. 

There has been current in England of recent years a 
reaction against reason, an avowed worship of instinct 
and tradition and even prejudice. The doctrines of this 
reaction are in themselves fascinating, and they have 
been preached by fascinating writers. The way of in- 
stinct and old habit is so full of ease, so facile and strong 
and untroubled. Look at the faces of men who are 
wrapped up in some natural and instinctive purpose. 
Look at a dog chasing his prey, a lover pursuing his be- 
loved, a band of vigorous men advancing to battle, a 
crowd of friends drinking and laughing. That shows us, 
say the writers aforesaid, what life can be and what it 
ought to be. "Let us not think and question," they say. 
"Let us be healthy and direct, and not fret against the 
main current of instinctive feeling and tradition." 

In matters of art such a habit of mind may be valua- 
ble; in matters of truth or of conduct, it is, I believe, as 
disastrous as it is alluring. True, the way of instinct is 
pleasant. I happened once to be waiting at a railway 



HERD INSTINCT AND THE WAR 65 

station on a summer afternoon. There were several rail- 
way men about, rather wearily engaged on work of one 
sort or another, when suddenly something happened 
which made them look alert and cheerful and put a 
kindly smile on their faces. One of them had seen some 
small animal — I think a rat — and a little crowd of 
them ran blithely and pelted it to death. One would 
have seen the same kindly and happy smile, the same 
healthy vigour, in the people who amid other circum- 
stances let loose their hunting instincts on runaway 
slaves or heretics or Jews. And the man among them 
who should feel a qualm, who should check himself and 
try to think whether such hunting was really a pleasant 
and praiseworthy action, would, I have little doubt, have 
looked guilty and uneasy and tongue-tied. His face 
would have condemned him. "Why should he trouble 
himself with thinking and criticizing? " people may say. 
" Why not enjoy himself with his mates? Thought is just 
as likely to lead you wrong as feeling is." 

The answer of mankind to such pleadings should be 
firm and clear. Human reason is very far from infallible, 
but the only remedy for bad thinking is to think better. 
The question was really settled for us thousands and 
thousands of years ago, by those little lemurs in the 
marshy forests. They took not the path of ease, but the 
path of hard brain-work, and we their children must go 
on with it. That is the way of life and the bettering of 
life, to think and labour and build up; not to glide with 
the current. We of the human race have our work in the 
scheme of things; and to do our work we must use all our 
powers, especially our greatest powers, those of thinking 
and judging. And even if we deliberately set our faces in 
the other direction, if we yield to the stream of instinct 



66 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

and let scruples and doubts and inhibitions be swept 
away, we shall not really find life easier. At least not 
for long. For the powers to which we yield will only 
demand more and more. 

There is one character in Shakespeare, who is often 
taken as a type — a very unflattering type, I admit — of 
the follower of the mere instincts; who feels the release, 
the joy, the sense of revelation which they bring, and 
thinks that they will lead him to glory. And I suspect 
that some modern adorers of instinct as against reason 
will in the end awake to disillusion like that of Cali- 
ban:— 

What a thrice-double ass 
Was I, to take this drunkard for a God, 
And worship this dull fool! 



IV 

INDIA AND THE WAR 1 

(March, 1915) 

Lord Haldane, Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

My task to-night is anything but an easy one. I wish 
to speak to one half of my audience only, though I am 
more than pleased that the other half should overhear 
all I say. I want to speak to the Indian students, and to 
speak to them as frankly as possible. It would be easy 
and very pleasant to expatiate on the achievements of the 
Indian troops in the war and the loyalty shown by the 
Indian people to the Empire. But I know that, if I did 
so, some Indians would be tempted to smile sardonically, 
and suspect that we have taken this loyalty too much as 
our due, as a mere testimonial to our good government. 
"We are loyal," an Indian friend of mine once said to 
me; "but our loyalty is to India, not England." He 
spoke only for himself, and I do not feel sure he was 
right, even for himself. Loyalty is not a thing that is 
owed. It is a thing that grows, or does not grow. When 
people have been comrades and worked together for 
a long time, — even with occasional quarrels, — there 
rises normally among decent human beings a bond of 
trust and a mutual expectation. Now, I believe that be- 
tween India and England that bond exists. We have had 
a long experience together and mostly — mostly — we 
have not failed one another. In your times of need, in 
1 Address to Indian students. 



68 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

plague or famine, you confidently expect us to help, and 
you find even our roughest subalterns and haughtiest 
officials working their fingers to the bone to help your 
people. In our times of need — well, you have not often 
had the full chance of showing what you could do. It is 
one of your grievances, and one with which I warmly 
sympathize. But now, when we are threatened to our 
very life, you have helped. You have given us more than 
we ever dared expect. That message of the Indian kings 
and princes which Mr. Roberts read out in the House of 
Commons will not easily be forgotten. 

We shall, I believe, win this war. India will share our 
glory. The same battles will be emblazoned on the 
banners of Indian and British regiments. But as you 
share our glory you will share our dangers; and it is a 
time of extreme gravity that fronts us when we look 
into the future. Before the war we were disturbed by 
an uncertain and treacherous neighbour. After the war 
we shall have a deadly enemy. It seems to me that 
the irony of history has been at work with Great 
Britain. As a nation we emphatically believe in peace. 
We are a people of traders and manufacturers who live 
by peace. Our ideals and philosophies are all peaceful. 
Yet here we stand, in the centre of an enormous war. 
Again, we believe in freedom, democracy, government 
by consent. We have largely been the teachers of those 
ideals to the world. And here we have climbed or 
slipped, steered or drifted, into the administration of a 
vast empire where we are governing dozens of other 
races by a system imposed from without and not de- 
pendent on the consent of the governed. No doubt we 
govern well. Some of you will have criticisms to make, 
but on the whole most people admit that we bring to the 



INDIA AND THE WAR 69 

art of government unrivalled experience and a great 
tradition of public spirit. But, granted that we govern 
well, we are still governing from outside, not by means 
of free institutions, and not in the spirit that we nor- 
mally consider British. And more, we do not see — I 
believe no one in the world sees — how any other 
method of government is possible, except, indeed, as 
a goal to work towards by progressive and careful 
change. That was the policy laid down by the Liberal 
statesmen of the nineteenth century, and to that I hope 
we shall always hold. 

What is the end to be? — not now, but hereafter, when 
you and I are in our graves to east or west of the great 
ocean, and the disputes, and grievances, and schemes of 
policy that divided us are forgotten or only remembered 
as curious puzzles for future historians to make sense of. 
Is the great Empire — I wish there was another word 
for it — of which you and I are part, for which your 
brothers and mine are shedding their blood together in 
Flanders, in Egypt, on the shores of the Persian Gulf, to 
grow to be indeed a Commonwealth, the greatest com- 
munity of free men and women that the world has seen? 
Or is it to fail, to end in bloodshed and ruin? Or again to 
establish and stereotype itself as one more in the great 
world-list of despotic empires, Babylon, Egypt, Rome, 
Byzantium, which have sometimes lasted so long and 
passed away so unregretted? 

That is the problem on which you and we are set. 
Neither of us can reject it. From the ends of the earth 
two utterly different civilizations, which yet were closely 
akin in their remote origins, have been caught again by 
the process of world-history and set together to this 
enormous task. Of course we may cut the problem: we 



70 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

may rush upon failure by mere fratricide. We may shirk 
it by abandoning our deepest ideals. We may, by great 
labour and heroic patience, by constant hard thinking 
and facing of facts, solve it successfully by building up 
the great Commonwealth of which I spoke. 

I do not underrate the difficulties that lie before us 
or the differences that separate us. One of them was 
brought home to me suddenly and vividly some time ago. 
There was a meeting to discuss our Government's policy 
in Persia; one speaker defending the Government sug- 
gested that our Ministers, knowing that Germany was 
ready to spring at the throat of her rivals at the first 
sign of difference between them, thought the danger 
of disintegration to Persia not too high a price to pay for 
European peace. The plea was I will not say accepted, 
but considered reasonable by the meeting. Then there 
rose an Indian — not a Parsee. He spoke quietly, not 
like a foreigner or one speaking a language strange to 
him. He seemed essentially one of us. And with an emo- 
tion that vibrated through the room he said that to him 
and his, European peace was as dust in the balance com- 
pared with the disintegration of Persia. Many of those 
who applauded him must have done so with a certain 
sense of guilt, a feeling that Persia had been to them a 
remote, unknown, half-civilized place which might, in 
a great crisis, be legitimately sacrificed to the peace of 
Europe. We must try to feel as an Indian would about 
such things as this; or at least to understand how he 
would feel. 

We shall have clashes of that sort, clashes arising 
chiefly from facts of geography. We shall have inter- 
minable clashes of habit and national character; clashes 
of sentiment. An instance is our present war with 



INDIA AND THE WAR 71 

Turkey. There has been a strain there, and both sides 
have met it with great forbearance. Indian Moslems 
have to look on while we batter down the door of a great 
Moslem empire. We, because of our relations to you, 
have stood a great deal more from Turkey than we 
should naturally be inclined to stand. Yes: as the Ger- 
mans have pointed out, there are between you and us 
the seeds of disunion. Of course there are, any one can 
see them. But there are seeds of brotherhood as well. 
And it does not follow that seeds of evil need grow more 
than other seeds. There is no nation so uniform, no 
small society, no band of friends, which has not seeds of 
disunion in it. It rests with men themselves, with their 
good-will and strength of character, whether amid the 
million seeds which life scatters, one kind or another 
comes to maturity. We must see to it that the seeds 
of disunion die while the others ripen. 

Again, we shall have clashes arising out of our dif- 
ferences of religion. The situation needs toleration, for- 
bearance: yes, but it needs more than that. It needs 
active mutual appreciation. If Christian and Moslem, 
Christian and Hindu, are to form a real Common- 
wealth, it is not enough for one of them to say of the 
others, " Such-and-such is a good fellow in spite of his 
religion." You must see that he is good because of his 
religion. There is some inherent religious quality, some 
piety, or devotion, which comes out in one religion as 
in another, and deserves respect. There are doubtless 
also some special qualities which are fostered specially 
by each separate religion. I speak from a point of view 
which some of you will share, some not; though I have 
heard a missionary say nearly as much. To me it seems 
to the last degree improbable that any one religion, or 



72 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

any one form of culture, has the monopoly of truth, and 
I expect Christianity to be improved by contact and 
comparison of thought with other great religions. 

And further: if this is true in religion, it must be true 
also in civilization. Look at any single civilization as it 
now exists. Look at it with plenty of common sense, 
but also a little imagination. England's is a fine civiliza- 
tion; it is both stable and progressive. Almost every de- 
partment of it, if you ask the experts, is demonstrably 
improving. 

Yet look through England. Go to the hotels and 
boarding-houses and notice the people you see; walk the 
streets of the great manufacturing towns; go to the places 
of amusement, the theatres and music-halls, and observe 
the audiences. Is it a civilization with which one can 
feel content? Is it a civilization to impose, untempered, 
upon the world? Clearly not. And your own civilization 
— I will not be impolite to it. I will leave you yourselves 
to think it over; to ask if it is satisfactory, if it is free 
from characteristics that fill you with discouragement 
and even some sense of shame, if it can possibly hold up 
its head as an equal among the great moving forces of 
the modern world except by drawing abundantly on the 
enlightenment of the West? I do not know what your 
various answers will be. But for my own part I believe 
that the true development of this vast heterogeneous 
mass of strong life which we call the British Empire will 
involve utilizing all the different elements and contribu- 
tions which our various races and societies can bring to 
the common stock. The process is already going on. It 
lies with us to make it into a good process or a bad. It 
is very easy to choose the bad and cheap and vulgar 
things in one another's habits. The way to do that is to 



INDIA AND THE WAR 73 

begin by despising one another and looking out for the 
contemptible things. If we respect one another, we shall 
tend more to notice and cultivate what is good. 

One great permanent difficulty — you see all my 
speech is made up of difficulties — is the vastness and 
variety of our respective nations. Many a time it must 
happen that an Englishman and an Indian, talking as 
friends over their national differences, feel that if the 
matter lay with them, if they too were their respective 
nations, it would not be hard to come to an understand- 
ing. But behind each is a trail of innumerable human 
beings, utterly unlike the two supposed principals. I 
can think of many pairs of sensible people who would do 
for my purpose; several statesmen, a great many writers 
and historians. But imagine, for example, Lord Haldane 
and the late Mr. Gokhale. Clearly they would under- 
stand each other: they might or might not agree on some 
special point, but the basis of common action and agree- 
ment and mutual respect would be there. But as you 
look at England, doubtless you see behind Lord Haldane 
masses of people less understanding and less sympa- 
thetic, cheerful, ignorant subalterns, common soldiers 
who talk contemptuously about "black men"; deter- 
mined old gentlemen, most falsely called " imperialists," 
who cry out that India was taken by the sword and must 
be held by the sword. You see in your indignant im- 
agination the squalid crowds that reel out of our public 
houses and music-halls and race-courses, and ask with 
secret rage if these are your born masters; if these are 
the people who claim by blood and birth and colour to 
be your inherent superiors! Is that overstated? No; I 
think not; though we must always remember in a well- 
ordered modern State how little the baser elements of a 



74 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

population direct its policy. But there they are. And on 
the other side, behind Mr. Gokhale — you can imagine 
better than I can describe the extraordinary combina- 
tion of peoples, of different habits and ethics, different 
religions and superstitions, different levels of culture 
from almost the highest to the lowest. "One nation 
governing another ": put at its crudest, such a principle 
implies putting the whole of one of these vast, incoher- 
ent, heterogeneous masses on top of the other to govern 
it. Any such process would be clearly wrong. It is a 
principle which even the stoutest, old-fashioned imperi- 
alist has abandoned. The only possible plan is, by one 
method or another, to select out of both masses those 
capable of governing best, and of best understanding 
and learning from one another. 

For the rest, we in our home politics have a large task 
before us in levelling up the conditions of our poorer 
classes to something worthier of our place in the world, 
in material conditions, in education, in outlook on the 
whole of life. Our task will be heavy; but a task of the 
same character lies before you, and yours will be colossal. 
You have a far larger field to plough; you have to cut 
your way through a far deeper and wilder jungle. To 
raise the level of life in Great Britain — in India: the 
more they are both raised to the level of their best peo- 
ple, the more they will be ready to understand and help 
one another, the more all the unnecessary difficulties 
between the two parties will tend to disappear. 

"Bande Mataram": "Hail, Mother !" I attended 
lately an Indian dinner where that Nationalist motto 
met one's eye at every turn. You will work in devotion 
to your Mother. It is well that you should. And no one 
who knows you can doubt that you have among you the 



INDIA AND THE WAR 75 

spirit of martyrs. That is a fine thing; in some emergen- 
cies of life an indispensable thing. But there is something 
far finer, and that is the spirit of a statesman. A martyr 
sacrifices himself rather than be false to some principle. 
A statesman, without thinking of himself one way or 
another, when he finds some evil or dangerous state of 
affairs sees how to make it safe or good. Let us serve our 
Mothers, you yours and we ours, so far as we can in the 
spirit of statesmen. 

But is there not — I put this question quite practically 
— a Greater Mother whose children we all are, whose 
day is coming, but not yet come? Cannot you and we 
work together in the service of this Greater Common- 
wealth, which is also the service of humanity? We must 
be together. I can see no future for an isolated India; 
no happy future for a Great Britain which is content to 
boast that she holds India merely by the sword. Work- 
ing together, we have formidable obstacles to face, but 
we have wonderful and unique gifts to contribute. 
Nations are apt to see vividly enough one another's 
faults, but they would do better to remember, as J. S. 
Mill puts it, their " reciprocal superiorities." I will not 
try now to define them. My own respect for England — 
if for the moment I may speak as one who has but little 
pure English blood in his veins, being an Australian 
Irishman of Scotch descent — has grown steadily with 
experience. But I will not dwell on special virtues of 
England, nor yet on those of India; on your wonderful 
intellectual aptitude and readiness for fine thought; on 
your great past which is still living; on your people's 
characteristic aloofness from the vulgarity of modern 
Western life; on the qualities shown in your Moslem 
architecture, your Hindu religious thought. But here 



76 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

I would venture, if I may, to suggest a caution. Some 
writers, I know, hold up for your admiration and exam- 
ple that famous episode in the Bhagavad Gita in which 
even the noise of battle has to wait unregarded while 
the stream of philosophic thinking runs its course. That 
spirit is a fine element in life ; but, if I may for once give 
advice, I will say: Beware of letting it be more than an 
element. To an Indian who wishes to make India great 
I would say, Beware of losing yourself in reverie while 
others are fighting the battles of life. Beware altogether 
of dreams and dreamlike passions. Face facts; get 
knowledge; cultivate common sense; learn to trust and 
be trusted; serve your community. Do not lose your- 
selves in admiration of your own past or your own racial 
peculiarities; think of your future, and be not afraid to 
uproot from your culture every element which prevents 
India taking her place among free and progressive nations. 
You need never be afraid that your own special quali- 
ties will not remain and exercise their valuable influence 
on the world. You will teach us and we you. And other 
nations will be near, bringing their help and their lessons: 
America not far off with her generous swiftness of move- 
ment and her loving-kindness towards all in suffering; 
not very far, perhaps, even our present enemies with 
their great powers of discipline, of self-devotion, and of 
remorseless effectiveness. Let us preserve our national 
characters. Let us use our feelings of patriotism and 
nationalism to inspire us and to give strength to our 
hands; but at the back of our minds let us always re- 
member our wider Commonwealth, our Greater Mo- 
ther, and think of the time when we brother nations 
may bring our various gifts to her feet and say together 
our "Bande Mataram." 



THE EVIL AND THE GOOD OF THE WAR 1 
{October, 1915) 

I should like before I begin to express to you the very- 
real gratitude I feel to a body like this in asking me to 
give this address, and in treating one whose religious 
views, freely expressed in books and lectures, are prob- 
ably to the left of almost all those here present, not as 
an outsider, but recognizing that people in my position 
are also capable of a religious spirit, and of seeking after 
truth in the same way as yourselves. I believe that you 
and I are in real and fundamental sympathy both over 
religious questions proper, and over a question like this 
of the war, which tests one's ultimate belief s and the real 
working religion by which one lives. I think that we 
may say that probably all here do begin, in their own 
minds, by feeling the war as an ethical problem. Cer- 
tainly that is the way it appealed to me, and it is from 
that point of view that I wish to speak to-night. 

Curiously enough, I remember speaking in this hall, 
I suppose about fifteen years ago, against the policy of 
the war in South Africa. I little imagined then that I 
should live to speak in favour of the policy of a much 
greater and more disastrous war, but that is what, on 
the whole, I shall do. But I want to begin by facing 
certain facts. Do not let us attempt to blind ourselves 
or be blinded by phrases into thinking that the war is 

1 Address to the Congress of Free Churches, October 27, 1915. 



78 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

anything but a disaster, and an appalling disaster. Do 
not let us be led away by views which have some gleam 
of truth in them into believing that this war will put 
an end to war — that it will convert Germany, and cer- 
tainly convert Russia to liberal opinions, that it will 
establish natural frontiers throughout Europe or that it 
will work a moral regeneration in nations which were 
somehow sapped by too many years of easy living in 
peace. There is some truth, and very valuable truth, in 
all those considerations, but they do not alter the fact 
that the war is, as I said, an appalling disaster. We knew 
when we entered upon it that it was a disaster — we 
knew that we should suffer, and that all Europe would 
suffer. 

Now, let us run over very briefly the ways in which it 
is doing evil. Let us face the evil first. There is, first, 
the mere suffering, the leagues and leagues of human 
suffering that is now spreading across Europe, the suffer- 
ing of the soldiers, the actual wounded combatants, and 
behind them the suffering of non-combatants, the suffer- 
ing of people dispossessed, of refugees, of people turned 
suddenly homeless into a world without pity. Behind 
that you have the sufferings of dumb animals. We are 
not likely to forget them. There is another side which we 
are even less likely to forget, and that is our own personal 
losses. There are very few people in this room who have 
not suffered in that direct, personal way; there will be 
still fewer by the end of the war. I do not want to dwell 
upon that question; the tears are very close behind our 
eyes when we begin to think of that aspect of things, and 
it is not for me to bring them forward. Think, again, of 
the State's loss, the loss of all those chosen men; not 
mere men taken haphazard, but young, strong men, 



THE EVIL AND THE GOOD OF THE WAR 79 

largely men of the most generous and self-sacrificing 
impulses, who responded most swiftly to the call for 
their loyalty and their lives. Some of them are dead, 
some will come back injured, maimed, invalided, in 
various ways broken. There is an old Greek proverb 
which exactly expresses the experience that we shall be 
forced to go through, "The spring is taken out of your 
year." For a good time ahead the years of England and 
of most of Europe will be without a spring. In that con- 
sideration I think it is only fair, and I am certain that 
an audience like this will agree with me, to add all the 
nations together. It is not only we and our allies who are 
suffering the loss there; it is a loss to humanity. Accord- 
ing to the Russian proverb, "They are all sons of 
mothers' ' — the wildest Senegalese, the most angry 
Prussian. And that is the state that we are in. We re- 
joice — of course we rejoice — to hear of great German 
losses. We face the fact: we do rejoice; yet it is terrible 
that we should have to; for the loss of these young Ger- 
mans is also a great and a terrible loss to humanity. It 
seems almost trivial after these considerations of life and 
death, to think too much of our monetary losses; of the 
fact that we have spent 1595 millions and that we are 
throwing away money at the rate of nearly five millions 
a day. Yet just think what it means; that precious sur- 
plus with which we meant to make England finer in 
every way — that surplus is gone. 

From a rich, generous, sanguine nation putting her 
hopes in the future, we shall emerge a rather poverty- 
stricken nation, bound to consider every penny of in- 
creased expenditure; a harassed nation, only fortunate 
if we are still free. Just think of all our schemes of re- 
form and how they are blown to the four winds — 



80 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

schemes of social improvement, of industrial improve- 
ment; a scheme like Lord Haldane's great education 
scheme which was to begin by caring for the health of 
the small child, and then lead him up by a great highway 
from the primary school to the university! How some 
of us who were specially interested in education revelled 
in the thought of that great idea; but it was going to cost 
such a lot of money. It would cost nearly as much as 
half a week of the war! Think what riches we had then, 
and on the whole, although we are perhaps the most 
generous nation in Europe, what little use we made of 
them. 

We speak of spiritual regeneration as one of the results 
of war, but here too there is the spiritual evil to be faced. 
I do not speak merely of the danger of reaction. There 
will be a grave danger of political reaction and of religious 
reaction, and you will all have your work cut out for you 
in that matter. The political reaction, I believe, will not 
take the form of a mere wave of extreme conservatism; 
the real danger will be a reaction against anything that 
can be called mellow and wise in politics; the real danger 
will be a struggle between crude, militarist reaction and 
violent, unthinking democracy. As for religion, you are 
probably all anxious as to what is going to happen there. 
Every narrow form of religion is lifting up its horns 
again; rank superstition is beginning to flourish. I am 
told that fortune-tellers and crystal-gazers are really 
having now the time of their lives. It will be for bodies 
like yourselves to be careful about all that. But besides 
that there is another more direct spiritual danger. We 
cannot go on living an abnormal life without becoming 
fundamentally disorganized. We have seen that, es- 
pecially in Germany; with them it seems to be a tend- 



THE EVIL AND THE GOOD OF THE WAR 81 

ency much stronger and much worse than it is with us; 
but clearly you cannot permanently concentrate your 
mind on injuring your fellow creatures without habituat- 
ing yourself to evil thoughts. In Germany, of course, 
there is a deliberate cult of hatred. There is a process, 
which I will not stop to analyze, a process utterly amaz- 
ing, by which a highly civilized and ordinarily humane 
nation has gone on from what I can only call atrocity to 
atrocity. How these people have ever induced them- 
selves to commit the crimes in Belgium which are 
attested by Lord Bryce's Commission, or even to or- 
ganize the flood of calculated mendacity that they pour 
out day by day, and last of all to stand by passive and 
apparently approving, while deeds like the new Arme- 
nian massacres are going on under their aegis and in the 
very presence of their consuls, — all this passes one's 
imagination. Now, we do not act like that; there is 
something or other in the English nature which will not 
allow it. We shall show anger and passion, but we are 
probably not capable of that kind of organized cruelty, 
and I hope we never shall be. Yet the same forces are 
at work. 

I do not want to dwell upon this subject too long, but 
when people talk of national regeneration or the reverse, 
there is one very obvious and plain test which one looks 
at first, and that is the drink bill. We have made a great 
effort to restrain our drinking; large numbers of people 
have given up consuming wine and spirits altogether, 
following the King's example. We have made a great 
effort and what is the result? The drink bill is up seven 
millions as compared with the last year of peace ! That 
seven millions is partly due to the increased price; but 
at the old prices it would still be up rather over two 



82 FAITH, AND WAR, POLICY 

millions. And ahead, at the end of all this, what pros- 
pect is there? There is sure to be poverty and unem- 
ployment, great and long continued, just as there was 
after 1815. I trust we shall be better able to face it; we 
shall haye thought out the difficulties more; we who are 
left with any reasonable margin of subsistence will, I 
hope, be more generous and more clear-sighted than our 
ancestors a century earlier. But in any case there is 
coming a time of great social distress and very little 
money indeed to meet it with. We shall achieve, no 
doubt, peace in Europe, we shall have probably some 
better arrangement of frontiers, but underneath the 
peace there will be terrific hatred. And in the heart of 
Europe, instead of a treacherous and grasping neigh- 
bour, we shall be left with a deadly enemy, living for 
revenge. 

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I do not think that I have 
shirked the indictment of this war. It is a terrible indict- 
ment; and you will ask me, perhaps, after that descrip- 
tion, if I still believe that our policy in declaring war was 
right. Yes, I do. Have I any doubt in any corner of my 
mind that the war was right? I have none. We took the 
path of duty and the only path we could take. Some 
people speak now as if going on with the war was a kind 
of indulgence of our evil passions. The war is not an 
indulgence of our evil passions; the war is a martyrdom. 

Now, let us not exaggerate here. It is not a martyrdom 
for Christianity. I saw a phrase the other day that we 
were fighting for the nailed hand of One Crucified against 
the "mailed fist." That description is an ideal a man 
may carry in his own heart, but, of course, it is an ex- 
aggeration to apply to our national position, to the po- 
sition of any nation in international politics. We are not 



THE EVIL AND THE GOOD OF THE WAR 83 

saints, we are not a nation of early Christians. Yet we 
are fighting for a great cause. . . .How shall I express it? 
We are a country of ripe political experience, of ancient 
freedom; we are, with all our faults, I think, a country of 
kindly record and generous ideals, and we stand for the 
established tradition of good behaviour between nations. 
We stand for the observance of treaties and the recogni- 
tion of mutual rights, for the tradition of common hon- 
esty and common kindliness between nation and "na- 
tion; we stand for the old decencies, the old humanities, 
"the old ordinance," as the King's letter put it, "the 
old ordinance that has bound civilized Europe together." 
And against us there is a power which, as the King says, 
has changed that ordinance. Europe is no longer held 
together by the old decencies as it was. The enemy has 
substituted for it some rule which we cannot yet fathom 
to its full depth. You can call it militarism or Real- 
politik if you like; it seems to involve the domination of 
force and fraud, it seems to involve organized ruthless- 
ness, organized terrorism, organized mendacity. The 
phrase that comes back to my mind when I think of 
it is Mr. Gladstone's description of another evil rule 

— it is the negation of God erected into a system of gov- 
ernment. The sort of thing for which we are fighting, the 
old ordinance, the old kindliness, and the old humanities 

— is it too much to say that, if there is God in man, it 
is in these things, after all, that God in man speaks? 

The old ordinance is illogical. Of course it is illogical. 
It means that civilized human beings in the midst of 
their greatest passiens, in the midst of their angers and 
rages, feel that there is something deeper, something 
more important than war or victory — that at the bot- 
tom of all strife there are some remnants of human 



84 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

brotherhood. Now, I do not want to go into a long list 
of German atrocities; much less do I want to denounce 
the enemy. As Mr. Balfour put it in his whimsical 
way, "We take our enemy as we find him." But there 
has been a special method throughout this war — the 
method the enemy has followed, to go at each step out- 
side the old conventions. We have sometimes followed. 
Sometimes we have had to follow. But the whole history 
of the war is a history of that process. The peoples fought 
according to certain rules, but one people got outside the 
rules right from the beginning. The broken treaty, the 
calculated ferocity in Belgium and northern France, the 
killing of women and non-combatants by sea and land 
and air, the shelling of hospitals, the ill-treatment of 
wounded prisoners; all the doctoring of weapons with a 
view to cruelty; the explosive bullets; the projectiles 
tinctured with substances which would produce a gan- 
grenous wound; the poisoned gases; the infected wells. 
It is the same method throughout. The old conventions 
of humanity, the old arrangements which admitted that, 
beneath our cruelties, beneath our hatreds, there was 
some common humanity and friendliness between all na- 
tions, these have been systematically broken one after 
another. Now, observe; these things were done not reck- 
lessly but to gain a specific advantage; they were done, 
as Mr. Secretary Zimmermann put it in the case of Miss 
Cavell, "to inspire fear." And observe that in many 
places they have been successful. They have inspired 
fear. Only look at what has recently happened and what 
is happening now in the Balkans. Every one of these 
Balkan States has looked at Belgium. The German 
agents have told them to look at Belgium. They have 
looked at Belgium and their courage has failed. Is that 



THE EVIL AND THE GOOD OF THE WAR 85 

the way in which we wish the government of the world 
to be conducted in future? It is the way it will be con- 
ducted unless we and our allies stand firm to the end. 

All these points, terrible as they are, seem to me to be 
merely consequences from what happened at the very 
beginning of the war. There are probably some people 
here who differ from what I am saying and I am grateful 
to them for the patient way in which they are listening to 
me. To all these I would earnestly say, "Do not despise 
the diplomatic documents." Remember carefully that 
the diplomacy of July and August, 1914, is a central fact. 
Remember that it is the one part of the history ante- 
cedent to this war which is absolutely clear as daylight. 
Read the documents and read the serious studies of them. 
I would recommend specially the book by Mr. William 
Archer, called " Thirteen Days." There is also Mr. 
Headlam's admirable book, "The History of Twelve 
Days," and the equally admirable book by the Ameri- 
can jurist, Mr. Stowell. 1 There the issue is clear and the 
question is settled. The verdict of history is already 
given in these negotiations. There was a dispute, a some- 
what artificial dispute which could easily have been 
settled by a little reasonableness on the part of the two 
principals. If that failed, there was the mediation of 
friends, there was a conference of the disinterested na- 
tions — there was appeal to the Concert of Europe. 
There was the arbitration of The Hague — an arbitra- 
tion to which Serbia appealed on the very first day and 
to which the Czar appealed again on the very last. All 
Europe wanted peace and fair settlement. The Govern- 
ments of the two Central Powers refused it. Every sort 

1 [Ellery C. Stowell, The Diplomacy of the War of 1914: The Begin- 
nings of the War (Boston, 1915).] 



86 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

of settlement was overridden. You will all remember 
that when every settlement that we could propose had 
been shoved aside one after another, Sir Edward Grey 
made an appeal to Germany to make any proposal her- 
self — any reasonable proposal — and we bound our- 
selves to accept it, to accept it even at the cost of de- 
serting our associates. No such proposal was made. All 
Europe wanted peace and fair dealing except one Power, 
or one pair of Powers if you so call it, who were confident, 
not in the justice of their cause, but in the overpowering 
strength of their war machine. As the semi-official news- 
papers said, "Germany does not enter conferences in 
which she is likely to be in a minority." By fair dealing 
they might have got their rights or a little more than 
their rights. By war they expected to get something like 
the supremacy of Europe. In peace, with their neigh- 
bours reasonable, in no pressing danger, Germany de- 
liberately preferred war to fair settlement; and thereby 
in my judgement Germany committed the primal and 
fundamental sin against the brotherhood of mankind. 

Of course all great historical events have complicated 
causes, but on that fact almost alone I should base the 
justice and the necessity of our cause in this war. Other 
objects have been suggested: that we are fighting lest 
Europe should be subject to the hegemony of Germany. 
If Germany naturally by legitimate means grows to be 
the most influential Power there is no reason for any one 
to fight her. It is said we are fighting for democracy 
against autocratic government. I prefer democracy my- 
self, but one form of government has no right to declare 
war because it dislikes another form. It is suggested that 
we are fighting to prevent the break-up of the Empire. In 
that case, from motives of loyalty, of course we should 



THE EVIL AND THE GOOD OF THE WAR 87 

have to fight, and I think the break-up of the Empire 
would be a great disaster to the world. But not for any 
causes of that description would I use the phrase I have 
used, or say that in this war we were undergoing a 
martyrdom. I do use it deliberately now : for I believe 
no greater evil could occur than that mankind should 
submit, or should agree to submit, to the rule of naked 
force. 

Now, I would ask again those who are following me, 
as I say, with patience, but I have no doubt with diffi- 
culty, to remember that this situation — in spite L of 
particular details — is on the whole an old story. The 
Greeks knew all about it when they used the word 
"Hubris" — that pride engendered by too much suc- 
cess which leads to every crime. Many nations after a 
career of extraordinary success have become mad or 
drunk with ambition, "By that sin fell the angels." 
They were not wicked to start with, but afterwards they 
became devils. We should never have said a word against 
the Germans before this madness entered into them. 
We liked them. Most of Europe rather liked and ad- 
mired them. But, as I said, it is an old story. There have 
been tyrants. Tyrants are common things in history. 
Bloody aggression is a common thing in history in its 
darker periods. But nearly always, where there have 
been tyrants and aggressors, there have been men and 
peoples ready to stand up and suffer and to die rather 
than submit to the tyrant, and the voice of history 
speaks pretty clearly about these issues and it says that 
the men who resisted were right. So that, ladies and 
gentlemen, as with our eyes open we entered into this 
struggle, I say with our eyes open we must go on with it. 
We must go on with it a united nation, trusting our 



88 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

leaders, obeying our rulers, minding each man his own 
business, refusing for an instant to lend an ear to the 
agitated whispers of faction or of hysteria. It may be 
that we shall have to traverse the valley of death, but 
we shall traverse it until the cause of humanity is won. 

And now, ladies and gentlemen, that being the cause, 
we are girt up in this war to the performance of a great 
duty; and there are many things in it which, evil as they 
are, can in some way be turned to good. It lies with us 
to do our best so to turn them. 

If we take the old analogy from biology, we are a 
community, a pack, a herd, a flock. We have realized 
our unity. We are one. I think most of us feel that our 
lives are not our own; they belong to England. France 
has gone through the same process to an even greater 
degree. Mr. Kipling, who used certainly to be no special 
lover of France, has told us that there "the men are 
wrought to an edge of steel, and the women are a line of 
fire behind them." Our divisions before the war it is a 
disgrace to think of. They were so great that the enemy 
calculated upon them, and judged that we should not 
be able to fight. These divisions have not been killed as 
we hoped; the remnants of them are still living. I cannot 
bear to speak of them. Let us think as little as possible 
about them, and lend no ear, no patience to the people 
who try to make them persist. As for the division of 
class and class, I think there, at least, we have made a 
great gain. I would ask you to put to yourselves this 
test. Remember how before the war the ordinary work- 
man spoke of his employer and the employer of his work- 
men, and think now how the average soldier speaks of 
his officer and how the officer speaks of his men. The 



THE EVIL AND THE GOOD OF THE WAR 89 

change is almost immeasurable. Inside the country we 
have gained that unity; outside in our relations with 
foreign countries we have also made a great gain. Re- 
member we have allies now, more allies and far closer 
allies than we have ever had. We have learned to respect 
and to understand other nations. You cannot read those 
diplomatic documents of which I spoke without feeling 
respect for both the French and Russian diplomatists for 
their steadiness, their extreme reasonableness, their en- 
tire loyalty, and as you study them you are amused to 
see the little differences of national character all work- 
ing to one end. Since the war has come on we have 
learned to admire other nations. There is no man in 
England who will ever again in his heart dare to speak 
slightingly or with contempt of Belgium or Serbia. It is 
something that we have had our hearts opened, that we, 
who were rather an insular people, have learned to wel- 
come other nations as friends and comrades. 

Nay, more, we made these alliances originally on a 
special principle about which I would like to say a sen- 
tence or two. That is the principle of the Entente, or 
Cordial Understanding, which is specially connected 
with the name of our present Foreign Secretary, and, to 
a slighter extent, with that of his predecessor. The 
principle of the Entente has been explained by Sir 
Edward Grey several times, but I take two phrases of 
his own particularly. It began because he found that 
"all experience had shown that any two great empires 
who were touching each other, whose interests rubbed 
one against another frequently in different parts of the 
world, had no middle course open to them between con- 
tinual liability to friction and cordial friendship.' ' He 
succeeded in establishing that relation of perfect frank- 



90 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

ness and mutual friendship with the two great empires 
with whom our interests were always rubbing. Instead 
of friction, instead of suspicion and intrigue, we estab- 
lished with our two old rivals a permanent habit of fair 
dealing, frankness, and good-will. The second great 
principle of the Entente was this, that there is nothing ex- 
clusive in these friendships. We began it with France, 
we continued it with Russia, we achieved it in reality, 
although not in actual diplomatic name, with the 
United States, and practically also with Italy, and any 
one who has read the diplomatic history will see the 
effort upon effort we made to establish it with our pres- 
ent enemies. I think we have here some real basis for a 
sort of alliance of Europe — that sort of better concert 
for which we all hope. One cannot guess details. It is 
very likely, indeed, that at the beginning Germany will 
stay outside and will refuse to come into our kind of 
concert. If so we must "take our enemies as we find 
them." The fact of there being an enemy outside will 
very likely make us inside hold together all the better 
for the first few years. When we are once thoroughly in 
harness, and most nations have the practice of habitually 
trusting one another and never intriguing against one 
another, then, no doubt, the others will come in. 

Now, I spoke at the beginning about the possible 
dangers of reaction, but there is a very good side also in 
the reaction. Part of it is right. It is in part a reaction 
against superficial things, superficial ways of feeling, and 
perhaps also superficial ways of thought. We have gone 
back in our daily experience to deeper and more primi- 
tive things. There has been a deepening of the quality 
of our ordinary life. We are called upon to take up a 



THE EVIL AND THE GOOD OF THE WAR 91 

greater duty than ever before. We have to face more 
peril, we have to endure greater suffering; death itself 
has come close to us. It is intimate in the thoughts of 
every one of us, and it has taught us in some way to love 
one another. For the first time for many centuries this 
"unhappy but not inglorious generation," as it has been 
called, is living and moving daily, waking and sleeping, 
in the habitual presence of ultimate and tremendous 
things. We are living now in a great age. 

A thing which has struck me, and I have spoken of it 
elsewhere, is the way in which the language of romance 
and melodrama has now become true. It is becoming 
the language of our normal life. The old phrase about 
" dying for freedom," about " Death being better than 
dishonour," — phrases that we thought were fitted for 
the stage or for children's stories, — are now the ordi- 
nary truths on which we live. A phrase which happened 
to strike me was recorded of a Canadian soldier who went 
down, I think, in the Arabic after saving several people; 
before he sank he turned and said, "I have served my 
King and country and this is my end." It was the nat- 
ural way of expressing the plain fact. I read yesterday 
a letter from a soldier at the front about the death of one 
of his fellow soldiers, and the letter ended quite simply: 
" After all he has done what we all want to do — die for 
England." The man who wrote it has since then had his 
wish. Or, again, if one wants a phrase to live by which 
would a few years ago have seemed somewhat unreal, 
or high-falutin, he can take those words of Miss Cavell 
that are now in everybody's mind, "I see now that 
patriotism is not enough; I must die without hatred or 
bitterness towards any one." 

Romance and melodrama were a memory, broken 



92 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

fragments living on, of heroic ages in the past. We 
live no longer upon fragments and memories; we have 
entered ourselves upon a heroic age. As for me personally, 
there is one thought that is always with me as, no doubt, 
it is with us all — the thought that other men are dying 
for me, better men, younger, with more hope in their 
lives, many of them men whom I have taught and loved. 
I hope you will allow me to say something here, and will 
not be in any way offended by the thought I want to 
express. Some of you will be orthodox Christians, and 
will be familiar with the thought of One who loved you 
dying for you. I would like to say that now I seem to be 
familiar with the feeling that something innocent, some- 
thing great, something that loves me, has died, and is 
dying for me daily. 

That is the sort of community that we now are — a 
community in which one man dies for his brother; and 
underneath all our hatreds, all our little angers and 
quarrels, we are brothers who are ready to seal our 
brotherhood with blood. It is for us that these men are 
dying, for us the women, the old men, and the rejected 
men, and to preserve the civilization and the common 
life which we are keeping alive and reshaping, towards 
wisdom or unwisdom, towards unity or discord. Ladies 
and gentlemen, let us be worthy of these men; let us be 
ready each one with our sacrifice when it is asked. Let 
us try as citizens to live a life which shall not be a mock- 
ery to the faith these men have placed in us. Let us build 
up an England for which these men, lying in their scat- 
tered graves over the face of the green world, would have 
been proud to die. 



VI 

DEMOCRATIC CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 1 

Even if this book were less good than it is, it would 
deserve reading for its admirable manners. It does not, 
indeed, convince my reason, but it leaves me with a 
profound respect for the tone and method of English 
politics at their best. No one would ever suspect from 
these pages of temperate and courteous argument that 
the author was a man who had just sacrificed his Parlia- 
mentary career to his principles, whose meetings were 
broken up by roughs, his person attacked, and his repu- 
tation assailed by gross calumny. This temper of mind 
is not only fine in itself, but particularly valuable in the 
present instance, inasmuch as it enables Mr. Ponsonby 
to clarify and to reduce to its true proportions a ques- 
tion on which political opinion has tended to run wild. 
Democratic Control has become a flag of battle. A 
bugbear to most orthodox supporters of the Govern- 
ment, it is a saving ideal to many sensitive and high- 
minded people who are half -maddened by the horrors 
that have descended upon us, and wish instinctively to 
explain them as the chastisement of some obvious sin. 

Now, Mr. Ponsonby has really thought out the details 
of a scheme for securing greater Parliamentary and 
democratic control over foreign politics, [it is not likely 
that his whole scheme will ever be adopted as it stands; 

1 Review of Democracy and Diplomacy : A Plea for Popular Control 
of Foreign Policy, by Arthur Ponsonby, M.P. (Methuen. 1915.) _ 



94 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

but I think it will perform two public services. In the 
first place, if the Union of Democratic Control, to whom 
the book is dedicated, adopts it, it will substitute a 
definite programme for a vague cry; and, in the second 
place, I think it will make clear to most reasonable 
people that a reform which consists in certain far from 
startling changes in Parliamentary custom cannot possi- 
bly produce that transfiguration of international politics 
for which so many hearts are athirst. 

Of course, Mr. Ponsonby's proposals for the future 
are based on a reading of the past, and, in my judgement, 
on a very serious misreading. "Diplomacy has failed." 
This is an outstanding "fact about which there can be 
no manner of dispute." I fear there can and must be. 
In a sense, of course, diplomacy has failed; just as 
one might say that law had failed whenever a burglar 
knocked down a policeman. But to most of us it seems 
a strangely shallow reading of events which finds the 
causes of the war in any mere perversity of Foreign 
Offices or any awkwardness in diplomatic machinery. 
It was not any bungling of diplomats that united the 
Powers of Europe against Napoleon. 

Neither can I for a moment accept the statement that, 
in Great Britain, between 1906 and 1914, "the people's 
view of international relations was fundamentally differ- 
ent from the traditional view of Governments" (p. 39), 
or that the House of Commons did not know — and 
approve — the general line of policy followed by the 
Foreign Office (p. 58). Mr. Ponsonby himself complains 
elsewhere that it was impossible to stir up in the House 
of Commons enough opposition, or even curiosity, in the 
region of foreign policy to bring about a debate (pp. 48, 
90, 99). This shows that there was at least no conscious- 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 95 

ness of a "fundamental difference." And no one will pre- 
tend that the secrecy practised by the Foreign Office 
was so complete and successful, that the "fundamental 
difference" was there without any one ever suspecting 
it. Further, it seems to me quite untrue, indeed pecul- 
iarly untrue, to say that, while Ministers are ready 
enough to make war speeches when occasion demands, 
no one "ever heard of a Minister going round and mak- 
ing peace speeches" in peace time (p. 29). I can remem- 
ber not only "peace speeches" by various members of 
the Government, but, what is far more useful, a great 
many semi-official societies and enterprises devoted to 
encouraging good relations with foreign nations, espe- 
cially with Germany. Such movements could always 
calculate on influential support. Indeed, if Mr. Pon- 
sonby can bring himself to read a book of Mr. Maxse's, 
entitled — very suitably — "Germany on the Brain," 
he will see that many persons lived for years in a state 
of habitual hysterics at the overfriendly tone towards 
Germany exhibited by all the members of the late 
Government. 

Mr. Ponsonby is on firmer ground when he dwells 
upon the great power held in foreign affairs by the Exec- 
utive, whether you regard that Executive as vested in 
the Cabinet or in the Foreign Secretary. (I think, by the 
way, that he considerably underestimates the element 
of Cabinet control. Does he really, for instance, imagine 
that Sir Edward Grey could have acted without the 
support of the Prime Minister?) He quotes in his second 
chapter some weighty opinions on this subject, especially 
from Lord Bryce and Mr. Austen Chamberlain. The 
Foreign Secretary has, without doubt, of late years ruled 
almost like a monarch over his vast domain; that is true, 



96 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

but what is the reason of it? The reason of it is that both 
Parliament and the country supported and trusted him. 
Suppose Mr. Ponsonby had been Foreign Secretary in- 
stead of Sir Edward Grey: would he, too, have had that 
undisputed authority? Or would he have found the press 
and the House of Commons so apathetic and complai- 
sant? Clearly not. The House of Commons would have 
bristled with threatening questions and motions of ad- 
journment and full-dress party debates on foreign policy. 
And, as a necessary result, the Liberal and Conservative 
associations throughout the country would have been 
stirred, and the average voter would have formed vehe- 
ment opinions about Mohammerah or Bunder Abbas or 
Fez, as circumstances might dictate. 

In some passages Mr. Ponsonby sees and even em- 
phasizes the truth of this. He admits that Parliament 
has not only been "ignorant and powerless," but "has 
been content to remain so" (p. 48). He complains that 
constituents have sometimes actually expressed dis- 
approval of their member taking an intelligent interest 
in the affairs of foreign countries (p. 110). The blame 
then lies rather with democracy than with diplomacy, 
but the charge itself is true. Agents often have to warn 
young candidates against "too much foreign policy." 
This is partly, no doubt, due to the mere narrowness of 
interest which always goes with lack of knowledge and 
weakness of imagination; partly, I think, it is due to a 
more special and perhaps temporary cause. For work- 
ingmen often feel an instinctive, and not unnatural, 
suspicion of the speaker who seems unduly interested in 
remote places and peoples. They can be roused, of course, 
by a full-blooded tale of atrocities; but, short of that, 
they are either bored or they suspect that the speaker has 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 97 

some axe of his own to grind. And they know that he has 
led them on to ground where he can easily deceive them. 
This attitude is, no doubt, regrettable. In a properly 
educated democracy it should be impossible. But it has 
most emphatically its good side, as I am sure Mr. Pon- 
sonby would be the first to acknowledge. It is the out- 
come of a state of mind which has no fears, no aggres- 
sive designs, and no grudges against foreign nations; an 
insular state of mind which is concentrated on the im- 
provement of our own national conditions, and is dis- 
posed to let other people look after themselves. I have 
often been struck, when conversing with foreigners, — 
Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, and above all members 
of the Balkan States, — by the vivid and detailed inter- 
est they show in alliances and combinations and possi- 
bilities of war, and the ready way in which they accept 
the fact that some nation or other is "the enemy." 
The average, moderate-minded Englishman is not at 
home in this atmosphere. He does not like to talk about 
wars and intrigues, and he will not calmly accept the 
suggestion that any nation is, as a matter of course, "the 
enemy." He has a feeling that the whole subject of 
foreign politics, as it is usually discussed, is unwhole- 
some. It suggests trains of thought which had better not 
be in people's minds at all. There is obviously a great 
deal of somewhat confused wisdom in this feeling; and 
I am not surprised to find Mr. Balfour saying that, in 
his opinion, when once people "are fairly confident that 
the general lines pursued are not inconsistent with na- 
tional welfare, then, I think, probably the less time 
given to foreign affairs the better" (p. 122). It is cer- 
tainly a happy nation that need not think much about 
foreign affairs; it is probably a wise nation which, if it 



98 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

has to think, does its thinking as rapidly and effectively 
as possible, and then occupies its mind with safer sub- 
jects. 

However that may be, Mr. Ponsonby proves his point 
as to the bare fact. Our foreign policy has, since the 
settling-up of the Boer War, pursued its way almost un- 
checked, and to a large extent uncriticized, by Par- 
liament or by public opinion. We are now landed in a 
great disaster, and Mr. Ponsonby assumes, without any 
present attempt at proof, that this disaster might have 
been avoided by a different foreign policy. He does not 
say what the right policy would at any point have been; 
that is not the subject of his book; but he believes that 
it might have been attained if the people of England had 
exercised a real and active control over the Foreign 
Office. That is, if I understand him aright, he believes 
that our policy would have been wiser and our influence 
for peace greater if the Foreign Secretary had always 
been compelled to ask himself, at each new step: " What 
will Parliament, what will my constituents think of this? " 
or "How will this look under the test of a general elec- 
tion?" He would admit, I presume, that such a policy 
must involve a certain loss in initiative, in decisiveness, 
and in rapidity. And he does not pretend that the ordi- 
nary mass of electors have more knowledge or more cool- 
ness or — I think — higher principles than Mr. Asquith 
and Sir Edward Grey. But he does believe that, in spite 
of all drawbacks, this publicity, this constant reference 
to the plain man, would somehow have resulted in the 
production of a better spirit, and have let gusts of fresh 
and wholesome air into the stale corridors of diplomacy. 
I feel on this subject that the argument of the book fails 
to convince me. 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 99 

There are several points, of course, which one willingly 
concedes to Mr. Ponsonby. If there had been demo- 
cratic control in Germany, there would probably have 
been a Social-Democratic Government, or at least a 
liberal and peace-seeking Government. But in France 
and England there were already liberal and peace-seek- 
ing Governments, and in Russia a Government which, 
whatever may be thought of its nascent Liberalism, was 
at least most earnest for peace. The Entente Powers 
possessed already the pacific tone which Mr. Ponsonby's 
reforms profess to offer them. And it does not seem 
reasonable to apply a particular remedy to the peace- 
seekers because it would do good to the war-seekers. 
Again, most persons of experience will concede to Mr. 
Ponsonby that they have occasionally heard individual 
diplomats and empire-builders talk about foreign affairs 
in a reckless and intriguing spirit, which would certainly 
not be countenanced by the House of Commons or an 
average popular constituency. A great deal of such talk 
is not to be taken seriously. It is the form in which these 
people take their romance. But sometimes, no doubt, it 
represents real opinions, and sometimes the holders of 
such opinions do acquire a temporary and surreptitious 
influence over public affairs. But my own experience has 
been that, though they always dread the " Talking Shop " 
and the "British Public," they dread " Downing Street" 
as much or even more. And rightly so, for as a matter 
of history during the last century the Foreign Office has 
acted almost always as a drag on these forward or expan- 
sionist movements, and a far more effective drag than 
"the public" can be, for the mere reason that it knows 
more and is harder to deceive. The Foreign Office is 
normally engaged on a mass of useful and unobtrusive 



100 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

wdrk, which the public never cares to read about, from 
the settling of small disputes by small agreements to the 
clearing of international waterways and the preservation 
of hippopotami. And international friction is what it 
most detests. 

This shows, I think, that the vital issue at stake in 
foreign politics is much more an issue between reason 
and unreason, between prudence and recklessness, be- 
tween moderation and chauvinism, than, as Mr. 
Ponsonby insists on regarding it, between democratic 
and oligarchic sentiment. I suspect really that he and 
his friends have been misled by a false analogy. A great 
many abuses in the past have been remedied by a mere 
extension of the franchise or a letting-in of democratic 
fresh air. Cases of class privilege and class oppression, 
of indefensible favouritism or nepotism or traditional 
abuse, these and many others can be treated by the 
simple application of publicity and democratic control. 
These cases mostly occur in home politics, because there 
the most common conflicts are class conflicts; the facts, 
if not simple, are at least familiar; the issues to be de- 
cided are very largely moral issues, and the people are 
called in to give, not an expert, but a disinterested judge- 
ment. Now, as a general rule in foreign politics the very 
reverse holds good. The conflicts are seldom or never 
class conflicts; the facts and the whole state of circum- 
stances surrounding the facts are unfamiliar, and can- 
not be understood without special study; the issues are 
seldom plain issues of right or wrong. Furthermore, the 
people of any one nation is, unfortunately, not dis- 
interested. The disinterested arbitrator, whom analogy 
demands, is not any single "people," but the Concert 
of Europe — a different story altogether. Neither the 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 101 

quality of disinterestedness, nor the kindred qualities of 
reasonableness, tact, self-control, and knowledge, which 
are specially required for the handling of foreign contro- 
versies, can be secured by any mere mechanical method 
such as the application of democratic control. 

Of course, there are sometimes cases in foreign policy 
where the democratic remedy is indicated; cases where 
a Government is in some sense conspiring against the 
wishes of the people, or where a bureaucracy is, for the 
sake of avoiding friction, tolerating some outrageous 
wrong. In both types of case I think that our own 
political practice does insure publicity; certainly any 
notion that a British Government can really conceal 
from all eyes the main trend of its foreign policy is the 
wildest dreaming; but, if Mr. Ponsonby can suggest any 
method by which to increase our assurance in this 
matter, he will be working in the spirit of the Consti- 
tution as well as forwarding the cause of democracy, and 
we must listen to his proposal with all sympathy. 

And here I will make my largest concession to him in 
the matter of our recent history. I think it is true, as he 
says, that owing to some extreme reticence in Ministers 
and other leaders of the nation, there grew up before the 
war a great divergence of expectation between the mind 
of the Foreign Office and that of the country, between 
those behind the scenes and the mass of outsiders. This 
divergence, I admit, was regrettable; but I do not think 
it arose from the cause which Mr. Ponsonby assigns. 
It was not because the Foreign Office was secretly 
aggressive and dreaded peaceful opinion. It was almost 
exactly the opposite. It was because the Foreign Office 
was straining every nerve for its twofold object, and it 
dreaded outside disturbance. Its object was, if possible, 



102 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

peace; if peace failed, security. It was trying to appease 
the sensitiveness of all reasonable Germany and at the 
same time to guard against the intrigues of militarist 
Germany. It was negotiating with a half-declared 
enemy, armed to the teeth, demanding world-power and 
ready to spring, muttering demands which seemed 
vague and sinister and which yet were well worth satisfy- 
ing if they were capable of being satisfied; a half -declared 
enemy who had once been a friend and might still by 
supreme tact and patience be reconverted to friendship; 
and in that crisis it did not want the cooperation of any 
one it could not trust. It told no falsehood and practised 
no intrigues. But it hid its difficulties; it spoke with a 
smiling face; it pretended always that things were less 
terrible than they were. And when at last the storm 
broke, we who had not been fully warned were amazed 
and angry, and some of us thought we had been cheated. 
Let Mr. Ponsonby look again at the writings of the 
Haldane-hunters and the other wolves of Jingoism. 
What is it that they complain of? It is that again and 
again there were dangerous situations out of which they 
could have made capital, and Lord Haldane and the rest 
of the Government did not give them the opportunity. 
German agents worked up sedition in India, German 
money corrupted the gendarmes in Persia, German dip- 
lomats committed breaches of diplomatic honour; and 
the Government kept it all dark! All the yellow press was 
waiting outside the door, longing for information, only 
too anxious to help ; all the people who wanted to turn 
out the Government, with civil war or without civil war; 
the schemers who wanted militarism for the sake of 
reaction, the lunatics who wanted trouble because they 
thought it fun. I quite admit that they would not have 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 103 

had entirely their own way: the other side would have 
had its say also. But would there be much safety in that? 
Mr. Shaw would have rushed to preserve the peace with 
criticisms the reverse of sedative. Some Syndicalists and 
some Irishmen of extreme views would have expressed 
their preference for the foreigner over the English 
capitalist. Mr. Ponsonby himself ... I would not for 
the world attack him. I believe he would have used all 
his influence absolutely and disinterestedly for good. 
But would he and his group, in a crisis like that, have 
supported the Government with real and effective 
friendship, have strengthened their hands and tried to 
show them that they could firmly count on the whole- 
some part of the nation? I believe they would; but I 
cannot blame the Foreign Office for doubting it. The 
nation as a whole would have been behind the Govern- 
ment. I have no doubt of that. But I believe that dur- 
ing those years the more thoughtful part of the nation 
actually preferred not to be consulted. And if any reader 
feels vehemently otherwise, I would ask him to look up 
the citations from the English press quoted in Revent- 
low's important book, " Deutschlands Auswartige Pol- 
itik," and then ask himself whether he would care to 
have such allies talking beside his Foreign Secretary 
when negotiations were peculiarly delicate. 

"Then," Mr. Ponsonby may reply, "you confess quite 
frankly that you do not trust the people?" Trust is a 
limited, not an unlimited, quantity; but I could answer 
that question better if I knew exactly what it meant, if 
I knew whether Mr. Ponsonby was referring to an actual 
or an ideal people. For he, like the rest of us, varies be- 
tween the two conceptions. At times he admits that the 
mass of the people is ignorant, indifferent, apt to be 



104 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

swayed by gusts of passion and deceived by interested 
newspapers, and that the good of its participation in 
active politics chiefly depends on the extreme danger of 
trying to keep it out. At others he still speaks of that 
ideal people whose lineaments have really come down to 
us from Shelley and Godwin; which looks straight at all 
questions without prejudice or personal interest and, 
therefore, with universal good-will and unclouded moral 
judgement. When we think of "the people" as control- 
ling our politics, do we mean a sort of residue which 
remains after removing all special classes and all per- 
sons of outstanding character or knowledge — a people 
which reads the yellowest type of newspaper and finds 
its heroes on the race-course and its politics in the music- 
hall? Or do we mean the sort of people which rises to 
the mind's eye as one returns from a meeting of the 
Workers' Educational Association or a particularly good 
trade-union discussion? And can Mr. Ponsonby see any 
way whereby the first people shall not snatch the deci- 
sion out of the hands of the second? In nine cases out 
of ten, doubtless, the common sense of the nation will 
assert itself. I have no doubt of that. But in the tenth 
case, in the critical and exciting and specially dangerous 
case, with organized bad influences ready to play on 
public opinion? No; undesirable as secrecy is on a mul- 
titude of grounds, I cannot see that perpetual publicity, 
as such, is any safe road to the keeping of peace. 

I grant, of course, fully that, in foreign affairs as in 
all the rest of politics, the will of the people must be 
supreme, and the ultimate control must be with the 
citizens of the country acting through Parliament. But 
I do not believe that increased democracy will serve as 
a substitute for character and wisdom, any more than an 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 105 

artificially restricted franchise will. Our foreign politics 
are not below the average standard of the nation; I be- 
lieve myself that they have been well above it. I believe 
that, under the present Foreign Secretary, our foreign 
policy has been conducted with as great care and pru- 
dence and with more than as great high-mindedness and 
resolute honesty of purpose, as that of any nation in 
modern history. But, if we are ever to rise to a foreign 
policy which shall be still higher, more daring and 
idealist, more ready to run risks for great ends, and more 
brilliant in meeting perils as yet far off and scarcely dis- 
cernible, it will not be by any mere democratization of 
machinery; it will only be by some enormous change of 
heart, in which the masses of the nation must take part 
fully as much as their rulers. 

I need hardly assure those who know Mr. Ponsonby 
that his concrete proposals are in no way either un- 
practical or revolutionary. In part, he merely calls 
attention to those reforms in the Foreign Office which 
have been recommended by the recent Civil Service 
Commission. Here every one will agree with him. 
Further, he proposes two changes in what we may call 
political procedure and one important, but not unreason- 
able, change in the Constitution. There is to be (1) an 
annual debate, occupying at least two days, on the 
Foreign Office Vote, in which the Foreign Secretary 
shall expound his whole policy. Besides this (2) it shall 
be the recognized duty of the Foreign Secretary to 
make periodical pronouncements in the country on 
foreign affairs, especially when Parliament is not sitting. 
These proposals could hardly be made compulsory, but 
they both seem desirable, so far as an outsider can judge. 



106 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

The country would certainly be glad to have both the 
debate and the periodical speeches, and it is difficult to 
see that anything but good would in normal circum- 
stances accrue to the Government. The sort of Foreign 
Secretary whose speeches would be a public danger 
would be sure to make them in any case. The change in 
the Constitution falls under three heads, and presents 
great difficulty. At present, as we all know, Parliament 
is a deliberative and legislative body; the executive 
power is vested in the Sovereign, acting through his 
Ministers. In practice, this sharp distinction is in many 
ways softened. A Government can be questioned about 
its executive acts, and cannot continue in existence if 
those acts are definitely disapproved by the House of 
Commons. The Home Secretary, for instance, can de- 
cide whether a particular condemned criminal shall be 
hanged or pardoned. If he knows the House wants the 
man pardoned, he can still hang him, but he does so at 
his peril; because, though the man will remain hanged, 
the Home Secretary will not remain Home Secretary. 
Consequently, he will never hang a man against what he 
believes to be the general feeling of the House, unless he 
has very strong reasons and is confident that he can 
justify his action. 

Similarly, the Government has at present the power 
of (1) making a treaty, (2) making an agreement or al- 
liance with a foreign country, and (3) declaring war. 
Mr. Ponsonby wishes to make all these powers depend- 
ent on previous consent of Parliament. The question is 
difficult and merits a full discussion. The case for Mr. 
Ponsonby's reform is obvious. There is certainly some- 
thing anomalous in the conception that a Government, 
which cannot pass the smallest bill without full Parlia- 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 107 

mentary debate, should be able to negotiate a treaty or 
form an alliance or even declare war without saying a 
word to any one. The case on the other side appears to 
rest on two arguments. First, there is a constitutional 
argument. Parliament is the Legislature, not the Exec- 
utive. It is from every point of view unfitted for ex- 
ecutive work. It contains the executive body and can 
dismiss it, but it must allow that body to do its own 
work in its own way. True, Parliament may have to 
allow many small things to be done against its wishes 
rather than take the drastic step of turning the Govern- 
ment out; but, it is argued, that arrangement just gives 
the Executive sufficient elasticity and power of real 
initiative. The discretion, no doubt, is larger in foreign 
affairs than in home affairs, but it is not different in 
quality. And foreign affairs, as a matter of fact, require 
that larger discretion. 

The second is a practical argument. It is pointed out 
that to make treaties dependent on the approval of 
Parliament is greatly to weaken the bargaining power 
of the Government. For a treaty is always a matter of 
give and take; each party has to make concessions. 
And, obviously, a foreign Power will often be willing to 
make a concession when assured of a firm bargain, which 
it would not make if it had to take the risk of having the 
whole bargain thrown back on its hands. For example, 
in the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907, Russia recognized 
our right to control the foreign relations of the Amir, 
which she had always disputed before. But would she 
have done so if she had known that the treaty as a whole 
was subject to the approval of the British Parliament, 
and that she might find herself in the position of having 
gained nothing, but given up an important point which 



108 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

could never quite be recovered? The proposed limita- 
tion certainly weakens the Government's bargaining 
power; it also makes treaties harder to conclude. For 
after almost every important treaty, you find the re- 
spective Parliaments complaining that their own Min- 
ister has not driven a hard enough bargain. The Par- 
liaments would thus be less likely to agree than the 
Ministers. And, further, a House which wants to quar- 
rel with a Minister about other matters can often show 
its annoyance by rejecting a treaty; as, for instance, the 
United States Senate rejected the Arbitration Treaty 
with England. Considering that most treaties — es- 
pecially if we remember the host of small but valuable 
treaties which attract no public notice — are attempts 
to settle international difficulties and remove causes of 
quarrel, while every treaty makes some demand upon 
international good-will, it would seem a deplorable thing 
to increase the obstacles in the way of concluding 
them. 

Furthermore, it is pleaded that, as a matter of experi- 
ence, there has been of late years in England no abuse of 
any of these special powers. Before the crisis of 1914 the 
Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary were able to 
assure the House that "there was no secret engagement 
which they would spring upon the House. The House 
was free to decide in any crisis what the British attitude 
should be." (Grey, August 3, 1914.) The treaties con- 
cluded have mostly been treaties of arbitration or simi- 
lar clearings-up; the main exception was probably the 
Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which, curiously 
enough, was announced to the Duma while still unknown 
to the British Parliament. As to declarations of war, 
Mr. Ponsonby quotes a startling statement from Homer 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 109 

Lea to the effect that in the nineteenth century Great 
Britain embarked on no less than eighty wars with no 
prior declaration at all. This figure, if in any sense cor- 
rect, must be obtained by counting every small expedi- 
tion against a savage tribe as a war. Such expeditions 
are almost always caused by incidents which make decla- 
rations of war unsuitable. In the case of a war with any 
civilized nation it is almost unthinkable that a British 
Government should either begin a war without declara- 
tion, or declare war without having made sure of the 
overwhelming support of Parliament and the country. 
The whole course of proceedings in 1914, and earlier, 
shows with what iron determination Grey refused to 
make any agreement or alliance or promise on his own 
responsibility, without the support of Parliament, and 
how carefully the Government explained the whole situa- 
tion to the House of Commons before taking any of the 
critical steps. True, if the House had insisted on pre- 
serving peace with Germany in 1914, Grey would pre- 
sumably have resigned. That only shows that a Minister 
who does not possess the confidence of the House cannot 
continue in office. 

Other countries, which possess written constitutions, 
have various rules limiting the power of the Executive 
in treaty-making. We, with our unwritten tradition, are 
probably in a transition stage. The Executive has in 
practice made a habit of carefully consulting the House, 
and, indeed, is attacked by critics both at home and 
abroad for hampering its own effectiveness by doing so. 
It is argued that if the British Government had had the 
courage to contract definite alliances and to announce 
definite lines of policy, without any reference to public 
opinion or Parliament, the European situation would 



110 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

have been clarified and Germany saved from the blunder 
of trading too far upon our notorious indecision and 
pacifism. I do not share this view; but I incline to think 
that it is at least as plausible as Mr. Ponsonby's. 

In the main, therefore, while believing that all Mr. 
Ponsonby's recommendations deserve sympathetic con- 
sideration, and some of them are almost beyond ques- 
tion right, I am not convinced that they would lead to 
any appreciable increase in the control exercised by the 
nation at large over foreign politics, much less that, if 
they had been put in practice ten years ago, they would 
have had the faintest effect in saving Europe from its 
present calamities. I do not wish to say that changes of 
procedure are not important things. In many ways they 
are. But the lack of effective democratic control over 
foreign politics is surely due to larger and deeper causes 
than these reforms can touch. The masses of the coun- 
try, as Mr. Ponsonby repeatedly tells us, are not inter- 
ested in foreign politics and do not want to hear about 
them. The lack of interest depends on lack of knowledge, 
and the lack of knowledge on lack of opportunity. The 
people who are interested in remote places are normally 
the few who happen to have travelled there, — a few 
officials, a few traders, and a few rich men with the 
taste for roaming. Even the countries nearest to us are 
seldom visited, and their languages seldom spoken, ex- 
cept by the leisured classes of society. It is hard to see 
any way out of this; the leisured classes must continue 
to have the interest and the knowledge, and therefore 
the main control. The working-classes, I fully agree, 
have every right to be suspicious and to appoint their 
Parliamentary watch-dogs. They have not been in any 
way betrayed, but they are quite right to take precau- 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 111 

tions against being betrayed. I hardly see how they can 
do more. 

Except, indeed, in one way: the way frankly recom- 
mended by Mr. Bertrand Russell in a little brochure pub- 
lished by the Labour press. His remedy is deliberately 
to make foreign policy a party question, and surround it 
with that exciting and inflammatory atmosphere which 
can be trusted to make the average voter attend. For 
the dullest or most abstruse subject becomes interesting 
as soon as our acquaintances begin fighting about it. 

Of course, Mr. Russell has a theory which justifies his 
gospel of strife — the theory that our recent policy "rep- 
resents merely a closing-up of the ranks among the gov- 
erning classes against their common enemy, the people" 
(p. 70). But not being able to share that view, I confess 
that this proposal repels me. If the party fight comes 
about because of a real and grave difference of belief, 
then by all means let it come. There are cases where 
silence and acquiescence might be a greater evil than any 
strife of parties. But a deliberate encouragement of 
strife for the sake of attracting popular interest seems 
to me a deplorable thing even in home matters, and 
considerably worse in foreign. The inflammatory atmos- 
phere may engender the necessary passion for over- 
turning some obvious wrong; but it does not make for 
truth or understanding or justice, or the other qualities 
that are most needed in diplomacy. If the party in 
power is engaged on a policy which the party out of 
power considers really iniquitous, of course the latter is 
bound to protest and oppose, and to announce that when 
it gets into power its own policy will be different. But 
the fact of so violent a divergence between parties is in 
itself a misfortune. It drives both parties into dangerous 



112 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

courses, and it clearly weakens the nation as a whole. 
For a nation's enmity becomes less formidable, and her 
friendship less attractive, when both are liable to be 
reversed at the next general election. 

As a matter of fact, the continuity of our foreign 
policy since the South African War has been due, not to 
the special desire of the two parties to be amiable with 
one another, — they were singularly free from any such 
weakness, — but simply to the facts of the situation. 
After a difference which rent the nation in two, and 
which was settled on definitely Liberal lines, there arose 
a situation in Europe about which most well-informed 
persons, whether Conservative or Liberal, took more or 
less the same view. This is the fundamental fact which 
has ruled our whole policy. No doubt each of the two 
parties abandoned something of their special predilec- 
tions. The imperialists accepted frankly the principle 
that the Empire must not be increased; the Liberals 
reluctantly agreed to enormous naval estimates. It is 
quite possible, now that the disaster we dreaded has 
come upon us, for each to imagine that if he had had his 
complete way, things might have been better. Person- 
ally I doubt it. And I think that, even if a slight twist 
in one direction or the other would have been an ad- 
vantage, that lost advantage was more than compen- 
sated by the fact that our policy was known to be per- 
manent and our word could be trusted by friend and 
foe. 

"Then you are content, are you?" a reader may say 
to me. "The policy of our Foreign Office was ideally 
right, and the end to which it has led us is quite un- 
objectionable?' ' No; the end has been disaster. It has 
been shipwreck. But not every wrecked ship was 



CONTROL OF FOREIGN POLICY 113 

wrecked by the fault of its captain. I imagine that since 
August, 1914, almost every human being in Great 
Britain has tried, with whatever knowledge he pos- 
sessed, to think what differences in our policy would 
have averted this war at some cost not greater than the 
war itself. And, so far as I have been able to read, no 
one has found a credible answer. Minor faults have 
been pointed out, odd lacks of information or energy or 
tact or initiative, such as are to be expected in a service 
containing vast numbers of men and spread all over the 
world; but no fundamental wrongness, no evil intent or 
folly. The fact seems to be that, if, some years ago, an 
angel had set himself to the task of saving Europe, he 
would not have begun by altering British policy. He 
would have begun by something quite else. 



v 



VII 

HOW WE STAND NOW 1 
(March, 1916) 

A few weeks ago I was giving a lecture to a certain 
Scandinavian society, and was asked after the lecture to 
sign my name in the society's book. As I looked through 
the names of the previous lecturers who had signed, I 
noticed the signature of Maximilian Harden. I inquired 
about his lecture — it was given before the war, in 1913 
— and heard that it had been splendid. It had, in the 
first place, lasted two hours — a dangerous excellence — 
and had dealt with Germany's Place in the Sun. The 
lecturer had explained how Germany was the first of 
nations in all matters that really count : first in things of 
the intellect, in Wissenschaft, science, history, theology; 
first socially and politically, inasmuch as her people were 
at once the most enlightened and most contented, the 
freest and best organized and most devotedly loyal ; first 
in military power and in material and commercial 
progress; most of all first in her influence over the rest 
of the world and the magic of her incomparable Kultur. 
She needed to expand and was bound to expand, both 
in Europe and beyond Europe. This could be achieved 
without difficulty; for Europe was already half con- 
quered, and England had been very obliging, in the 
matter of colonies. So far the first hour and a half; then 
came the climax. This expansion would be of little use 

1 Address to the Fight for Right League. 



HOW WE STAND NOW 115 

if it were obtained by mere peaceful growth. Germany's 
power needed a stronger foundation. It must be built on 
a pedestal of war and "cemented with blood and iron." 
This lecture, if it could be unearthed, would form a 
curious comment on Har den's recent utterances in favour 
of peace and good- will; but that is not what I wish to 
dwell upon. I want merely to take this doctrine as a 
sort of text, and carefully to consider its implications. I 
do not say for a moment that it is, or ever was, the 
doctrine of all Germany; but it is, I think, the doctrine 
that has prevailed. It is the doctrine of Bernhardi — a 
writer by no means so negligible as some critics have 
tried to make out. It is the doctrine of that very remark- 
able German Secret Paper which appears as No. 2 in the 
French Yellow Book. It is the doctrine of the leading 
German intellectuals represented by Rohrbach or by 
Naumann. And, what is more significant, it seems to 
me to be the doctrine generally held by pro-Germans in 
neutral countries. Such pro-Germans seldom discuss the 
negotiations of 1914 or the responsibility for the war. 
They take the bold line that Germany is the finest nation 
in the world, and has a right, by war or otherwise, to 
seize the first place. They tacitly accept the doctrine of 
Harden's last half-hour, except, of course, that where 
Harden expected to achieve his end by one short and 
triumphant war, they now with Dr. Rohrbach only ex- 
pect to realize their full hopes "in this war, or the next, 
or the next, or the next after that ! " 

Now, what is our answer, speaking — if we can — not 
as indignant Britishers, but as thinking men who try to 
be impartial — what is our answer to Harden's claim? 
If Germany is really so superior to other nations, — and 



116 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

she can make out, or could before the war, a rather 
plausible case, — ought we to check her? Ought we to 
strengthen a comparatively backward power, like Rus- 
sia, against her? 

Surely our reply is quite clear. If Germany is what 
she claims to be, she will get her due place by normal 
expansion and development. If she is growing in wealth, 
in population, in material, intellectual, and spiritual 
power, — no one will say she is hampered by undue 
modesty or lack of advertisement, — she will inevitably 
gain the influence she demands; she was already gaining 
it. We do not stand in her way except as legitimate 
rivals. We have not balked her colonial expansion; we 
agreed with her about the Bagdad Railway. But if, to 
make her claim firmer, she insists on war; if she seeks to 
build her empire upon innocent blood, then, both as a 
rival nation valuing our own rights and as civilized men 
in the name of outraged humanity, we meet force with 
force. We will show this empire which demands a 
foundation of blood and iron, that blood at least is a 
slippery foundation. 

So much for the first question suggested by my text; 
now for a second. How does the existence of this doc- 
trine and the fact of its wide acceptance bear upon the 
question of Peace? Have we blundered into this war, 
through the folly of our Governments, with no funda- 
mental quarrel? or are we confronted with a deliberate 
policy — a policy backed by an army of ten to twelve 
millions, which we cannot tolerate while we exist as a 
free nation? It seems to me clear, and ever increasingly 
clear, that the governing forces in Germany are fighting 
in the spirit of Harden's speech, to create a world-power 



HOW WE STAND NOW 117 

which shall be, in the first place, hostile to ourselves, 
and, in the second place, based on principles which we 
regard as evil. 

The ideal has been most clearly expressed in Nau- 
mann's remarkable book "Mitteleuropa," and in the 
immense discussion to which that book has given rise. 
Some German critics think that Naumann is too mod- 
erate in the East, some that he unduly neglects the 
colonies. But in general there emerges from the whole 
discussion the clear ideal of a united empire reaching 
from Antwerp to Bagdad, dominated, organized, perme- 
ated, and trained for war by the German General Staff, 
and developed economically by German trusts and 
cartels. It is the ideal of Rohrbach and the Intellectuals 
who write in Deutsche Politik. It is implicit in the old 
speeches of the Kaiser and Prince von Bulow. It is im- 
plicit equally in the recent speech of the present Chan- 
cellor, insisting that "any possible peace" must be based 
"on the war situation as every war map shows it to be." 

The war situation on land already gives Germany her 
empire of Mitteleuropa! Her armies reach now from 
Antwerp to Bagdad, from Riga to the frontier of Egypt 
— that frontier which Rohrbach describes as "the 
throat of the British Empire," to be held always in Ger- 
many's grip. The colonies are gone; true. But if Ger- 
many is sufficiently strong in Europe, it is a maxim of 
German policy that colonies can be recovered. 

A critic may say, "But this implies annexation; and 
the whole principle of annexation is being vigorously re- 
pudiated in Germany." Quite true. It is being repu- 
diated; and not only by the Socialists, but by many 
bourgeois politicians and professors. There has been a 
curious unanimity, these last weeks, in the repudiation 



118 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

of the annexation policy. What is the explanation of a 
phenomenon which seems so strangely, so suspiciously, 
gratifying? 

Remember Austria before the war ! She was willing to 
guarantee the territorial integrity of Serbia. She did not 
wish to annex territory; no, she wanted a Vassal State. 
That is the clue to the problem why Rohrbach and 
Harden want no annexation, why even the Chancellor is 
willing to consider a policy without annexations. Ger- 
many has no need of annexations if she can end this war 
as a conqueror, alone and supreme against a world in 
arms. 

The Chancellor has explained that he is content not 
to annex Belgium, provided he can have guarantees that 
Germany shall have her " due influence in Belgium" The 
same "due influence," I presume, which she now pos- 
sesses in Turkey and Bulgaria, neither of which countries 
she has annexed. The same "due influence" which she 
will inevitably have, if peace is made on the basis of the 
present military situation, in Greece, in Rumania, in 
Sweden. And who imagines, after that, that Denmark 
or Holland can hold out? Peace on the basis of the 
present military situation establishes at a blow the 
empire of Mitteleuropa, and presents the professional 
German war-mongers with another successful war. 

Let us here consider another objection. " If Germany 
is to gain this position by mere prestige, without any 
annexation," it may be suggested, "does she not clearly 
deserve it? Are we not wrong to object to it? " I answer, 
No, she does not deserve it, and we have the right to 
object. She claims that prestige on the ground that she 
has won the war; and that, we maintain, is a false ground, 



HOW WE STAND NOW 119 

because she has not won the war. We mean to see whether 
she can win. An interesting object lesson is now being 
worked out before the eyes of the smaller nations, those 
semi-civilized Balkan and Asiatic communities who 
have had so little experience of honest politics and such 
abundant experience of international scoundrelism. They 
are waiting to see whether the last word of political 
wisdom is to be found in the way in which Germany 
treated Belgium, and Austria treated Serbia, and both 
Powers treated the unhappy Balkan States at the time 
of the last Balkan War. They are waiting to see whether 
it is safe and wise to plot evil, to lie, to prepare, to spring 
upon your prey; or whether the great mass of decent 
human society is in the long run strong enough to 
beat down any nation that plays the assassin against its 
fellows. 

That is how the knowledge of this policy bears on the 
question of Peace. A great Scandinavian shipbuilder the 
other day told me that he had one word of advice, and 
one only, to give us about the war. "Beat Germany this 
time," he said, " for, if you do not, next time she will beat 
you." 

I will ask you now to face with me a third question, 
suggested not so much by Har den's actual speech as by 
the tone of my own criticism of it. I think Harden 's 
programme wicked; I regard the political action and 
the whole manner of thought of the German leaders 
as both treacherous and cruel; I think and speak of it 
with indignation, and so do you. Now, have we any 
right to that tone? 

I met in France lately an old friend of mine, who told 
me in a genial way that all such indignation was hypoc- 



120 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

risy, pure hypocrisy. " Germany was perfectly right in 
all she had done, and if we had been clever enough to 
think of it, we would have done the same." And he 
challenged me with certain quotations from English and 
American writers, which I will put before you in a 
moment. 

Now, we all know that our indignation is not hypo- 
critical. Whether warranted or not, it is perfectly sin- 
cere. There is no question of that. But I wish, before 
answering my friend in detail, to make one frank ad- 
mission. Our moral indignation is not hypocritical ; but I 
admit that it is a dangerous state of mind. As soon as 
we begin to have that kind of feeling towards any na- 
tional or personal enemy, a feeling of indignant scorn 
for -some one else coupled with a conviction of our own 
great superiority, it is dangerous: we ought instantly to 
collect ourselves and bear in mind, at the least, the possi- 
bility that, "but for the grace of God, there go we and 
there goes Great Britain.' ' 

"If we had been clever enough, we would have done 
the same": let us see what, in this respect, Germany 
did. She forced on Europe a war that could have been 
easily avoided; she broke her treaty in a peculiarly 
treacherous way; she trampled on international law; she 
practised deliberate "f rightfulness" on the civil popula- 
tion in Belgium and northern France; she twisted all the 
rules of war towards less chivalry and greater brutal- 
ity; she slew unarmed civilians wholesale with her sub- 
marines and Zeppelins; and, if we are adding up her list 
of crimes, we should not forget the most widespread and 
ghastly of all, her deliberate starvation of Poland and her 
complicity in the unspeakable horrors of Armenia. 

' Would we, could we, as a nation, ever have done these 



HOW WE STAND NOW 121 

things? No one who knows England will really argue 
that we would actually have done them. But let us go 
further. Do we habitually harbour principles and use 
arguments which would justify our doing such things, if 
circumstances tempted us that way! As a nation I am 
clear that we do not; but I must face some of my friend's 
quotations. 

As for the general theory: well, our late Field Marshal, 
Lord Roberts, was a great and chivalrous soldier, ad- 
mired and loved by his fellow countrymen. Yet it seems 
that in his "Message to the Nation" he definitely 
praises and recommends for our imitation the doctrines 
of General Bernhardi, and particularly admires the 
German Government for pouring scorn on President 
Taft's proposals for arbitration treaties (pp. 8, 9). Well, 
I confess I wish Lord Roberts had not written thus. My 
defence must be the rather speculative one, that I do 
not believe he really accepted the doctrines that he 
seemed to preach. At any rate, you will not find any- 
where in his long military life that he practised them. 

Again, when we speak of "scraps of paper," I find 
that a certain English soldier, a member of my own clan, 
too, has expressed his opinions about them even more 
vigorously than Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg. He is speak- 
ing of our seizure of the Danish Fleet in 1807. "Nothing 
has ever been done by any other nation more utterly in 
defiance of the conventionalities of so-called interna- 
tional law. We considered it advisable and necessary 
and expedient, and we had the power to do it; therefore 
we did it. Are we ashamed of it? No, certainly not. 
We are proud of it." The writer is Major Stewart- 
Murray in "The Future Peace of the Anglo-Saxons." 
The history, of course, is incorrect, the language is 






122 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

muddled; but the writer's general meaning is clear 
enough. And it is certainly not for him to throw stones 
at professed treaty-breakers. 

My friend's next quotations are from Mr. Homer Lea. 
Now, I do not feel myself responsible for Mr. Homer Lea, 
because after all he is American, not English. But cer- 
tainly, to judge by the quotations, his principles would 
warm the hearts of Attila or Admiral von Tirpitz. They 
would not, I think, have appealed to General Robert 
Lee, and I am certain would have horrified Homer. Even 
that most sinister sentence with which the horrors of 
Belgium were justified — the maxim that an invading 
army should " leave the women and children nothing but 
their eyes to weep with " — even that was not the in- 
vention of the Teuton. It was welcomed and carried into 
practice by them; but its invention belongs to an 
American general and it has been quoted with admira- 
tion by certain English writers. 

Lastly, let us take two statements of what I may call 
the mystical creed of militarism. I want you to guess 
which of the two is German and which English. " War 
gives a biologically just decision, since its decisions arise 
from the very nature of things." And, again: "War is 
the divinely appointed means by which the environment 
may be readjusted till ' ethically fittest' and 'best' be- 
come synonymous." Which of those two is German? 
Which is the more remote from good sense? which the 
more characteristic in its mixture of piety and muddle- 
headedness? Well, I don't know what your guesses are 
but the first is from Bernhardi, and the second from 
Colonel Maude, on "War and the World's Life." 

In "Punch" last week there was a cartoon represent- 
ing a blundering Teutonic giant with a spiked club, ad- 



HOW WE STAND NOW 123 

vancing under the motto, " Weltmacht oder Niedergang ! " 
Naturally, when any person is kind enough to give the 
rest of the world that choice, we all unanimously say, 
"Niedergang, if you please." Yet I find in the book of a 
well-known and kindly and learned English writer the 
statement that "a choice is now given to England, a 
choice between the first place among nations and the last ; 
between the leadership of the human race and the loss of 
empire and of all but the shadow of independence." 

Of course, one sees more or less what he means; but 
why exaggerate? Why insist on " leadership of the 
human race" ? Why express the policy you advocate in 
terms which must necessarily exasperate Russia, France, 
the United States, and all the other great nations? Is 
that the way to get allies among nations of whom each 
one considers itself as good as you? Is it the spirit in 
which to conduct decent diplomacy, the spirit in which 
to deal fairly and reasonably with the other members 
of the great fraternity of Europe? 

What, then, is the answer to my friend's challenge? I 
confess myself still unshaken by it. We must admit that 
these militarists, these enthusiastic spurners of inter- 
national law, these eloquent would-be torturers of civil 
populations, these rejecters and despisers of arbitra- 
tion and peace, do exist among us; they exist among 
us, but, thank Heaven and our own common sense, they 
do not control our Government. They are not England. 
In Germany, they have controlled the Government. 
And the world has seen the fruit of their principles when 
carried into action, in all its horror and all its helpless 
futility. 

Plato always insisted — you will excuse a Greek 



124 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

scholar for once referring to Plato — on the great com- 
plexity of human character. It is never One; it is always 
a mass of warring impulses; and his solution of the prob- 
lem presented by that inward war was to maintain the 
character as an " aristocracy," in which the best forces 
should be uppermost and the lower ones beaten down. 
The same rule should apply both to the individual and to 
the State. I believe that — in Plato's sense of the word, 
which is, of course, quite different from its ordinary 
modern meaning — we do possess in Great Britain such 
an "aristocracy." Our better natures on the whole rule 
our public action ; we give our national confidence to our 
better men. We have behind us a very great tradition. 
In peace we are the most liberal and the most merciful 
of all great empires; in war we have Napoleon's famous 
testimonial, calling us "the most consistent, the most 
implacable, and the most generous of his enemies." It is 
for us to keep up that tradition, and I believe that the 
men who rule us do keep it up. The main effort of the 
nation is high and noble, but in the strain and anxiety 
of this long war one becomes conscious of the struggle 
towards expression of something lower, something mean, 
angry, intemperate, hysterical, slanderous — the bar- 
barian slaves, as Plato would put it, clamouring that the 
city itself shall be governed by barbarian slaves. 

I take one case, not mentioning names because I do 
not wish to attack any individual, from the "Times" 
of a few days back. The children of interned aliens are 
fed by the Boards of Guardians on workhouse principles. 
With the rise of prices an increased grant was necessary, 
and was applied for by the Local Government Board. 
(It remained considerably lower than the allowance for 
the children of our own soldiers and sailors.) A certain 



HOW WE STAND NOW 125 

Member of Parliament asked Mr. McKenna if, before 
sanctioning the grant, he would give due consideration 
to the increasingly bad conditions under which British 
civilians were now forced to live at Ruhleben. 

Mr. McKenna: The proposals of the Local Government 
Board have already been approved. In their treatment of 
prisoners and other enemy aliens in this country, His Majesty's 
Government are guided by the dictates of humanity and the 
principles of The Hague Convention. + 

Another honorable Member: Before the right honorable 
gentleman sanctions the increase, will he ascertain what grants 
are being given to the children of interned British prisoners in 
Ruhleben? 

Mr. McKenna: I do not think the two cases can be weighed 
one against the other. No matter what other Governments 
may do, this Government will continue to be actuated by the 
principles of humanity. 

The honorable Member: How does the right honorable 
gentleman expect to get better treatment for British prisoners 
in Ruhleben if he gives everything with both hands to the chil- 
dren of interned Germans here? 

Mr. McKenna: I do not think my honorable friend states the 
case quite fairly. We believe ourselves bound by certain 
principles — the rules of The Hague Convention. We have 
acted honestly and fearlessly in conformity with those rules, 
and I hope the House will support the Government in so doing. 

I choose this incident, not from any wish to attack the 
honorable Members involved, one of whom I know to be 
a quite kindly person, but because it just illustrates my 
argument. It shows a bad and foolish and un-English 
impulse struggling to obtain power and being very prop- 
erly crushed. No reasonable person really imagines that 
cutting down the food of these children below what the 
Guardians think necessary will help us in the faintest 
degree to win the war; and, above all, that is not the way 



126 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

in which Great Britain makes war, — or, please God, 
ever will make war, — by starving a lot of little enemy 
children whom we happen to have in our hands. 

I wonder sometimes that people — especially people 
who write letters to newspapers — seem to have so little 
pride in their country. I suppose there is some psycho- 
logical luxury in making vindictive suggestions of this 
kind, or in spreading wild accusations against one's 
leaders. But it is the sort of luxury that ought to be 
strictly cut down in time of war. It is misleading to 
other nations; and, with public servants as with others, 
you do not get the best work by incessant scolding. For 
my own part, I am more proud of Great Britain than 
ever in my life before, and that largely because, in spite 
of this froth or scum that sometimes floats on the surface, 
she is fundamentally true to her great traditions, and 
treads steadily underfoot those elements which, if they 
had control, would depose us from being a nation of 
" white men," of rulers, of gentlemen, and bring us to 
the level of the enemy whom we denounce or the " lesser 
breeds without the law." 

Probably many of us have learned only through this 
war how much we loved our country. That love de- 
pends, of course, not mainly on pride, but on old habit 
and familiarity, on neighbourliness and memories of 
childhood. Yet, mingling with that love for our old 
country, I do feel a profound pride. I am proud of our 
response to the Empire's call, a response absolutely un- 
exampled in history, five million men and more gathering 
from the ends of the earth; subjects of the British Em- 
pire coming to offer life and limb for the Empire, not be- 
cause they were subjects, but because they were free and 
willed to come. I am proud of our soldiers and our 



HOW WE STAND NOW 127 

sailors, our invincible sailors! I am proud of the retreat 
from Mons, the first and second battles of Ypres, the 
storming of the heights of Gallipoli. No victory that the 
future may bring can ever obliterate the glory of those 
days of darkness and suffering, no tomb in Westminster 
Abbey surpass the splendour of those violated and name- 
less graves. 

I am proud of our men in the workshop and the fac- 
tory, proud of our men and almost more proud of our 
women — working one and all day after day, with con- 
stant overtime and practically no holidays, for the most 
part demanding no trade safeguards and insisting on no 
conditions, but giving freely to the common cause all 
that they have to give. 

I am proud of our political leaders and civil adminis- 
trators, proud of their resource, their devotion, their 
unshaken coolness, their magnanimity in the face of 
intrigue and detraction, their magnificent interpreta- 
tion of the nation's will. I do not seek to palliate mis- 
takes or deprecate criticism, so long as it is honest and 
helpful criticism. But, when almost every morning and 
evening newspapers professing to be patriotic pour in 
their attacks on these men who are bearing our burden, 
— attacks which will wither away and vanish with our 
first big victory, — I will venture to state one humble 
citizen's opinion : that, whether you look at the Head of 
the Government or whether you look at the great Secre- 
taryships and Administrative Offices, from the begin- 
ning of the war till now, I doubt if at any previous period 
of English history you will find a nation guided by such 
a combination of experience, high character, and com- 
manding intellectual power. 

A few days ago I was in France in the fire-zone. I had 



128 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

been at a field dressing-station, which had just evacuated 
its wounded and dead, and was expecting more; and, as 
evening was falling, full of the uncanny strain of the 
whole place and slightly deafened with the shells, I saw a 
body of men in full kit plodding their way up the com- 
munication trenches to take their place in the front line. 
I was just going back myself, well out of the range of 
guns, to a comfortable tea and a peaceful evening; and 
there, in trench after trench, along all the hundred miles 
of our front, day after day, night after night, were men 
moving heavily up to the firing-line, to pay their regular 
toll of so many killed and so many wounded, while the 
war drags on its weary length. I suddenly wondered in 
my heart whether we or our cause or our country is 
worth that sacrifice; and, with my mind full of its awful- 
ness, I answered clearly, Yes. Because, while I am proud 
of all the things I have mentioned about Great Britain, 
I am most proud of the clean hands with which we came 
into this contest, proud of the Cause for which with clear 
vision we unsheathed our sword, and which we mean to 
maintain unshaken to the bitter or the triumphant end. 



VIII 

IRELAND 

I. The Dublin Insurrection 
(June, 1916) 

I write of this question as an English Liberal whose 
father was an Irish Catholic and a friend of Daniel 
O'Connell. I have all my life been a devoted Home 
Ruler, a follower of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Asquith, and 
Mr. Redmond. All these leaders are loyal Britishers, 
and believe that Home Rule is good both for Ireland and 
for the whole British Empire. 

What was the cause of the Dublin insurrection of 
April last? The delay of Home Rule, causing widespread 
disappointment and mistrust; the bad example of the 
Ulster Party before the war, with their importation of 
arms from Germany and their open threats of civil war 
if Home Rule was passed ; and lastly, the constant sedi- 
tious propaganda of the avowed enemies of England, 
whether old Fenians and "physical force men" or paid 
tools of the Germans. 

Why was Home Rule delayed? Because it was so dif- 
ficult to carry. The Liberals proposed the first Home 
Rule Bill in 1886, and were thrown out of office upon it. 
They got it through the House of Commons in 1892, and 
were defeated in the Lords. After a long period of defeat 
they carried it three times through the House of Com- 
mons between 1910 and 1914, and meantime passed the 



130 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

"Parliament Act," overriding the veto of the House 
of Lords. So at last in 1914 Home Rule was ready to 
come into law. Then came the last ditch, the armed op- 
position of almost all the Protestants of the Northeast 
corner of Ireland. These Ulstermen, led by Sir Edward 
Carson, refused to accept any compromise or amend- 
ment, but merely declared that they would not accept 
Home Rule, and, if it were passed, would declare a civil 
war. They proceeded to drill and to import arms from 
Germany. 

What was Mr. Asquith, then Prime Minister and 
leader of the Liberal Party, to do? His object was to 
pacify Ireland; and it appeared that four fifths of Ire- 
land threatened permanent disaffection if Home Rule 
was not granted, while one fifth threatened instant civil 
war if it was granted. With immense patience and pub- 
lic spirit he tried to bring both parties to accept some 
compromise, but did not succeed until the war with 
Germany broke out. Then, under the stress of a com- 
mon and terrific danger, both sides accepted a com- 
promise. The Home Rule Bill was passed into law, but 
it was not to come into operation till after the war; and 
before it came into operation an amending bill was to be 
passed which should enable Ulster to stay outside the 
bill. Home Rule was thus again postponed. 

Next came the Coalition. Mr. Asquith thought the 
country would be more united in the work of the 
war if all parties joined in the Government. The new 
Government was composed of Liberals, Tories, and La- 
bour men in proportion to their numbers in the House. 
Among the Tories in the new Government was Sir Ed- 
ward Carson, who had declared that he would lead a 
civil war rather than accept Home Rule. The Irish Na- 



IRELAND 131 

tionalists began to lose faith; it looked as if they would 
never get Home Rule at all. True, Carson very soon 
left the Government, but all the Tories had been pledged 
against Home Rule; and though they declared, quite 
honestly, that they would abide by the compromise of 
1914, it was easy for mischief-makers in Ireland to sow 
mistrust. These mischief-makers, partly in German 
pay, partly disaffected fanatics, kept up an underground 
propaganda, saying that England would break all her 
promises, that the English Liberals were frauds, that 
the Irish Nationalists under Redmond were a stale old 
crew of politicians, run by "the priest, the publican, the 
1 gombeen-man/ and the English M.P." Thus, all was 
ready for treason, and treason came in a very abrupt and 
bloody form. 

There are three main parties in Ireland: (1) The 
Constitutional Nationalists, under Redmond, loyal to 
the British connection, but determined above all things 
to win Home Rule by Parliamentary and legal meth- 
ods. They generally work with the English Liberals. 
(2) The Ulster Protestants led by Carson, including the 
Orangemen and the few Protestants in the other parts 
of Ireland, professing extreme loyalty and refusing to be 
in any way separated from Great Britain, but ready to 
fight against Great Britain rather than be made part 
of a Home Rule Ireland. They are supported by most 
of the English Conservatives. (3) Conspirators and 
avowed enemies of England, including some Sinn Fein- 
ers, some old Fenians, and some revolutionaries, who 
were intriguing to help the Germans or any one else 
who would injure the British Empire. 

Now, it is obvious that ordinary loyal Britishers can 
have no dealings with this third class, least of all at a 



132 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

time when we are fighting for our lives, and thousands of 
loyal Irishmen, both Catholic and Protestant, are giving 
their lives for us in the trenches. And further it is obvi- 
ous that, whenever the constitutional demand for Home 
Rule seems to fail and the Irish begin to lose hope, this 
third party of treason and violence will be strengthened. 
It is to this third party that Casement and the Dublin 
rebels belonged. 

Roger Casement had been in the British consular serv- 
ice all his life. He had done good work, received pro- 
motion, been treated with confidence, been awarded a 
knighthood, and had written a letter of almost excessive 
gratitude for it to the Government. Just before the out- 
break of the war he got away from England, crossed to 
Germany, and gave the Germans all the information he 
was able to give to help them in destroying us. In partic- 
ular he was employed to seduce from their allegiance all 
Irish soldiers who were prisoners in Germany. These 
poor fellows were promised immediate freedom and high 
pay if they would join the Germans and help to invade 
Ireland; they were fed with the most detailed and infa- 
mous lies against England; if they accepted Casement's 
proposals their food allowance was increased; if they 
refused his proposals, they were starved. To their in- 
finite credit it must be said that only some forty or fifty 
men out of several thousands gave way. On the con- 
trary, Casement was more than once hooted out of the 
camps and had on occasion to be protected from the in- 
dignant prisoners by a German sergeant. On one oc- 
casion, one of his associates offered, for a payment of 
five thousand pounds, to betray Casement to the British 
Government. The offer was, of course, accepted. What- 
ever one may think of the man who offers to betray his 



IRELAND 133 

associates, no Government in the world would refuse 
such an offer if it was made to them. The man, however, 
did not carry out his plan. 

At last all was ready. On April 20, Casement was 
landed on the west coast of Ireland from a German 
cruiser, laden with arms. The cruiser was caught by 
British destroyers and sank itself to conceal something 
that it contained; the crew was saved. Next day Case- 
ment was arrested near the shore with a companion, 
heavily armed and giving a false name. On the 24th a 
bloody little rebellion broke out in Dublin. All police 
and soldiers — even wounded soldiers from the hospitals 
— were shot down at sight, and a great number of peace- 
ful citizens killed or wounded. The dead amounted to 
some hundreds. At the same time a German squadron 
attempted a raid on the east coast of England, but was 
routed by the local destroyers and small craft. There 
was an unsuccessful rising at Enniscorthy which was put 
down by the spontaneous action of the Irish Nationalist 
Volunteers. There were attempts at risings in other parts 
of Ireland and attempts against the railways in England. 
It was not till May 1 that the whole rebel force surren- 
dered unconditionally. During a whole week Dublin had 
lived under a reign of terror. For the rising, though con- 
taining a number of leading Sinn Feiners and sentimental 
Irish enthusiasts, was chiefly carried out by wild Labour 
men, who had been disowned by the trade-unions, and 
by actual criminals. These men used explosive bullets 
and committed some acts of great cruelty. 

The German raid was defeated, Casement arrested, 
the rebels in Ireland put down. What was to be done 
next? Two answers were possible. "Punish the rebels," 
said the Ulstermen and the English Conservatives; 



134 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

"annul the Home Rule Bill; send forty thousand troops 
to Ireland, and uphold the law. Let there be an end of 
paltering with treason." "Grant Home Rule at once," 
said the Nationalists and the English Liberals; "re- 
move all possible excuses for mistrust. And — guilty as 
they are — give pardon to all the rebels you possibly 
can." What was Mr. Asquith to do? His whole object 
was to pacify Ireland, and that could be done only by 
finding a course to which both parties would, however 
reluctantly, agree. The course ultimately approved was 
(1) to punish a small number of the rebels, who had per- 
sonally been most deeply engaged in the bloodshed, and 
so maintain the rule of the law. Sixteen men were thus 
put to death. (2) To satisfy the national demand of 
four fifths of Ireland by putting Home Rule into force 
at once. All "loyalist" or Protestant Ireland had been 
roused to fury by the Dublin insurrection, and it was 
almost impossible to win their consent to this grant of 
Home Rule. It was hard also to persuade the Nation- 
alists to make any concessions. However, Mr. Lloyd 
George was set to the work of persuading both parties 
in Ireland to agree to some settlement. If the rebels 
had not been punished Ulster would not have listened 
to him. 

At last Lloyd George induced the Ulstermen to agree 
to Home Rule for the rest of Ireland on condition that 
Ulster should not be forced into the scheme without her 
consent, and the Nationalists to agree to the exclusion 
of Ulster provided the whole arrangement should be 
reconsidered by an imperial conference after the war. 
This was the basis of a compromise which had then to 
be laid before the Cabinet, and which unfortunately came 
out of the Cabinet in a slightly different form from that 



IRELAND 135 

with which it went in. A fierce dispute is now raging 
about the changes in the scheme; but they seem to me 
to be only points of detail and easily capable of arrange- 
ment by sensible men. The main point that remains is 
the question of Casement's fate. 

He was tried for high treason in London in June. He 
had a fair and even a generous trial. His advocate, Mr. 
Sullivan, was allowed unusual latitude. A special ar- 
rangement was made to allow a distinguished American 
lawyer to come and take part in the defence. But of 
course there was no real defence possible. If ever there 
was a clear case of high treason, it was this, nor can one 
discover any extenuating circumstances except possibly 
the prisoner's previous services to the country he had 
now betrayed. If you take the ground of open hostility 
to England, and argue that any act of rebellion by an 
Irishman is meritorious in itself, you can excuse Case- 
ment. But that is not a ground that any English tribunal, 
or any impartial tribunal, can be expected to take. On 
grounds of justice there is no doubt whatever of Case- 
ment's guilt, and no reason why he should not be put to 
death, like any other traitor. 

It is entirely a question of policy; entirely a question 
of what will be the effect on Ireland. The Conservatives 
argue — with much justice — that the law has too long 
been despised and disobeyed in Ireland. The Govern- 
ment must assert the law, and show they are not afraid. 
Above all, they must not pardon the most guilty of all 
the rebels after executing many of his dupes, just be- 
cause he is a man of some wealth and position with a 
title and a gallant past. The Liberals tend to retort that 
an execution goes badly with an attempt at pacifica- 
tion. Too much blood has already been shed in Ireland, 



136 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

especially by the rebels themselves. An act of mercy 
does little harm in any case, and Casement is less danger- 
ous living and pardoned than dead and transformed into 
a martyr. 

For my part, I leave the question to Mr. Asquith. 
Mr. Asquith has no vindictiveness in him and is never 
swayed by passion. I know he will think of nothing but 
the granting of Home Rule, the pacification of Ire- 
land, and the reconciliation of the two warring parties. 
Compared with those aims I care very little whether 
Casement lives or dies; and, to do him justice, amid all 
his treachery, I believe that he himself cares as little. 



II. The Execution op Casement 
(August 3, 1916) 

I wrote the foregoing words in New York in July, 
while Casement's fate was still in the balance. About 
a week later he was hanged. The royal prerogative of 
pardon was not exercised. For my own part, not having 
attended the Cabinet council at which the final decision 
was reached, I cannot tell how I should have voted had 
I been there and heard the arguments; but I freely admit 
that I should have gone to the discussion with the inten- 
tion of voting for a pardon. 

On what ground? It is somewhat hard to say. Cer- 
tainly not on any ground of justice. There never was a 
clearer case nor a fairer trial. Nor yet from that fine, if 
somewhat unreasoning, sense of decency and chivalry 
which makes the British Government spare the Countess 
Markievitch and steadily refuse to execute female spies. 
Not from the sort of personal pity which made Lord 



IRELAND 137 

Grey intervene on behalf of the American boy who was 
caught acting as a German spy in England, and sent him 
home to his parents. Not from that admiration for a 
stout fighter and a brave enemy which made Captain 
Muller of the Emden rather a hero in England, and which 
has twice saved De Wet. Not because Casement was an 
ignorant man seduced into evil courses, on which ground 
the court acquitted his fellow prisoner, Bailey. Neither 
could one plead for Casement's pardon on the ground 
that he was deranged in mind like that other unhappy 
Irishman, Lieutenant Coulthurst, who shot Mr. Sheehy- 
Skeffington and two other prisoners because a voice 
from Heaven so directed him, and who is now among the 
criminal lunatics at Broadmoor. Alienists were sent to 
examine Casement, but none could find any insanity in 
him. Least of all would I seek to pardon him because 
there were press campaigns on his behalf in neutral coun- 
tries. I should be sorry to seem in any way discourteous 
to my journalist friends on either side of the Atlantic, 
but I do think it would be a bad day for justice if legal 
sentences were to be reversed in America to please Eng- 
lish newspapers, or in England to please American. It 
is certainly not the Irishman in me that would have 
pressed for his pardon. I regard Casement as one of the 
worst and most cruelly reckless enemies that Ireland 
has had for the last fifty years, and I believe that most 
Nationalists agree with me. As the son of an Irishman 
and a lifelong Home Ruler, I boil with indignation when 
I think how Casement's crazy treason has deluged Dub- 
lin with unforgettable blood and perhaps ruined for- 
ever a cause that was almost won. 

I should have voted for pardoning him because, with 
the part of me that is English and Liberal, I feel still a 



138 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

sense of ancient hereditary guilt towards Ireland, and 
have an instinctive desire to seize every possible oppor- 
tunity for magnanimity towards Irish rebels. In general 
we British are good governors and even popular, so far 
as governors are ever popular. A vast experience has 
eventually taught us our lesson. But we went to Ireland 
before we, or any other Power, had learned either to 
govern or to assimilate dependencies oversea^ we made 
all the usual mistakes, committed the usual crimes, and 
have left a state of permanently inflamed feeling which 
it will take many generations of wisdom and sympathy 
to live down. And every drop of Irish blood spilt by 
English law, however justly, seems to rouse the sleeping 
furies of all the Irishmen unjustly slain by England since 
the days of Elizabeth and Cromwell. 

On this ground I should have voted for pardoning 
Casement. 

With these thoughts in my mind I happened to read 
an article in the "New York Times" on Sunday, Au- 
gust 13, by an Irishman whom I regard with every respect 
and sympathy, Mr. John Quinn. Part of it is an impas- 
sioned defence and eulogy of an old friend to whom Mr. 
Quinn, in spite of a recent breach, remained deeply at- 
tached. On all that part of the article I have nothing to 
say. Casement's character is to me an enigma. The 
evidence — even the pre-war evidence — about it is 
violently conflicting; but it is greatly in his favour that 
many of his oldest associates, who ought to know him, 
feel towards him as generously as Mr. Quinn does. But 
other parts of Mr. Quinn's statement seem to me to 
illustrate what I said above: a drop of Irish blood spilt 
by Englishmen rouses all the furies of the past. 

Mr. Quinn's reason is pro-Ally, and I think I may even 



IRELAND 139 

say pro-British. The last paragraph of his article is an 
eloquent appeal on behalf of the Allied cause. But the 
tragic end of Casement has roused in him just that an- 
cient, and, if I may say so, unreasoning, bitterness to- 
wards England which otherwise had fallen asleep. 

What are the reasons he urges to show that Casement 
should have been spared? I do not wish to speak slight- 
ingly of them, but really they form a curious collection. 
And as you study them you see that they are none of 
them reasons connected with justice or even with that 
reasoned mercy which normally influences the Crown in 
its prerogative of pardon. They are at worst based on 
the hypothesis that any act committed by an Irishman 
is pardonable so long as he commits it from hatred of 
England; at best they are the sort of arguments that 
are, sometimes, in bad cases, submitted to a French jury 
in defence of a crime passionne. 

Casement did commit high treason against Great 
Britain. But then "he regarded the British Govern- 
ment as his country's permanent and irreconcilable 
enemy." He did not love Germany. " No single action 
of mine," he wrote, "has been an act for Germany" ; only 
Germany happened to serve his hatred of England! 
He acted from pure hatred. Is that any special reason 
for not letting the law take its course? Similarly, when 
he tried to seduce the Irish captives in Germany from 
their allegiance, and was rejected and scorned by the 
enormous majority of them, "it is an abominable false- 
hood" to say that Casement got the recalcitrant pris- 
oners' rations reduced, or, I suppose, got certain in- 
dividuals among them shot. Casement was perfectly 
innocent ! He merely walked away, protected by a Ger- 
man sergeant, and it was the Germans who starved or 



140 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

shot the disobedient prisoners! Not a very satisfying 
defence, I think. And it seems regrettable that two of 
these starved Irish prisoners, who were afterwards ex- 
changed as incurable, continued to believe this " abom- 
inable falsehood," and sent a message to the Prime Min- 
ister that they regarded Casement as their murderer. 

Again, Mr. Quinn quotes some edifying sentences in 
which Casement explains that "loyalty rests on love," 
and that government should be based on love, not on 
restraint. Such sentiments are almost common form 
nowadays among the worst stirrers-up of fraud and 
hatred! There is hardly a Nationalist in Ireland who 
will not smile bitterly at this praise of "love" from one 
who set himself savagely to prevent the growth, not 
only of love, but even of decent peace and good feel- 
ing between Irish and English. I wonder if the Irish 
prisoners in Germany thought of him as an apostle of 
love? 

The legality and the fairness of Casement's trial are 
admitted — except apparently that even justice is un- 
just if it comes from Englishmen — and Casement him- 
self did not really deny his treason. Yet Mr. Quinn 
repeats some half-hearted suggestions made by the pris- 
oner's counsel. He admits that Casement did seduce 
prisoners in Germany, with German help, from their 
allegiance, and formed them into an Irish brigade which 
was inspected and approved by German authorities. 
But his intentions, it is pleaded, were quite harmless: 
"he never intended them to help Germany"! Mr. 
Quinn is a lawyer; does he know many juries who would 
accept that statement? 

Lastly, "in Casement's insurrection not a drop of 
blood was shed." This is really a little brazen. Case- 



IRELAND 141 

ment landed from a German submarine on April 20, 
intending to stir up a rebellion in the West; the rebellion 
broke out in Dublin on the 24th; at the same time the 
German fleet made an unsuccessful raid on the east 
coast, and attempts were discovered to cut the English 
railway lines. 1 And we are asked to believe that all 
these events had nothing to do with one another and 
that Casement has no responsibility for the three hun- 
dred men and women killed and more than a thousand 
wounded in Dublin! 

No. I would myself have been disposed to pardon 
Casement, but I cannot see the ghost of a doubt about 
his guilt, nor yet about the fairness of his trial. I cannot 
see any extenuating circumstances in the case of Case- 
ment, beyond those that can be pleaded for all political 
criminals from Guy Fawkes to Booth. My only reason 
would be that reluctance ever, if one can possibly help 
it, to put any Irishman to death for offences against 
England, that anxiety to atone for the harshness of the 
past by extreme tenderness in the present, which moves 
most liberal Englishmen in their feeling towards Ireland. 
I accept Mr. Quinn's parallels from Germany and Aus- 
tria. I do not for a moment think that the English Gov- 
ernment of Ireland for the last century has been at all 
like that of Germany among her Poles or of Austria 
among her Slavs. But a century earlier it was so, and I 
accept the parallel. I do not in the least blame the Aus- 
trian Government for executing the assassins of the 
Archduke, provided she gave them a fair trial first, and 
only punished those really guilty. The most I should 
dream of asking from that Austrian tribunal would be 
a certain leniency to the very young or misguided, and 

1 I myself was one of a party called out to guard the Great Western. 



142 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

extreme care in every case where there was a shadow of 
doubt. 

"But at least/' Mr. Quinn may retort, "you would 
have admired or praised the criminals, who were rightly 
striving to be free?" Not exactly. I would judge them 
far less harshly than ordinary private murderers, just as 
I do Casement ; because, however wrongly, they thought 
they were working for their country and had suffered 
gross oppression. The rest would depend on a multitude 
of questions. How far were they disinterested; how much 
were they really oppressed; how brave or cruel, devoted 
or treacherous, was their action; what reasonable chance 
was there of its leading to any good result? I will, and 
do, weigh all those questions on behalf of Sir Roger Case- 
ment. I am sure he was brave and in a sense disinter- 
ested; but I do not think he was at all seriously "op- 
pressed," * I do not think his plot had any reasonable 
chance of doing good, and I cannot acquit him of some 
cruelty and treachery. 

Mr. Quinn foretells that he will be a popular hero in 
Ireland, his faults forgotten, his virtues and good looks 
idealized. That is very likely, indeed. It would remain 
likely if Casement had been the greatest scoundrel in 
Christendom, and all that his enemies said of him were 
proved true. Mr. Quinn knows enough history to realize 
the freakishness of popular fame in these matters. One 
cannot acquit or pardon a guilty man because he would 
make a good hero for a novel. 

1 The act of oppression about which he seems to have felt most 
bitterly was the decision that the Atlantic mail steamers should cease 
to call at Queenstown. I do not know the merits of this question, nor 
whether the initiative came from the steamship companies, or the Gov- 
ernment. But it is not the sort of "oppression" that can be wiped out 
only by blood. 



IRELAND 143 

No. I can find no ground for pardon, except that one 
ground which I have mentioned. I even doubt whether, 
if the Government had spared Casement on the mere 
cynical ground of trying to please Irish opinion, they 
would have got the price of their weakness. Our op- 
ponents were ready for either event. Since he is hanged, 
he is to be a stainless martyr; had he been spared, he 
would have been an English spy, who had got up the 
rising to give the English a chance of massacring Irish- 
men. At the best, he would have been let off because 
of his social position and his Protestantism. I heard the 
subject discussed myself, and know that these lines were 
to be taken. 

But what of American opinion? American opinion, 
on the whole pro-Ally and not by any means anti-Brit- 
ish, would certainly have welcomed Casement's pardon. 
Yes, and so should I. But I think that American opin- 
ion in these grave matters suffers from one very serious 
weakness. To us the war is a reality; to neutrals it is 
largely a spectacle. To American onlookers an Irish 
rising is a romantic episode; to us, in our long death- 
grapple, it is a cruel stab in the back, all the more cruel 
because it was provoked by no oppression, only by our 
supposed dangers; because it was stirred up by deliber- 
ate hatred after Home Rule was already passed and on 
the statute book; because the man who meant to lead it 
was one whom we had taken into our political counsels, 
trusted and treated with honour. 

Our business is a very serious one; we have to do the 
right thing, the wise thing, not the thing that will be 
most applauded in the gallery. American opinion is gen- 
erous, generally disinterested, rather romantic. Its gal- 
lery is well situated, but rather distant from the real 



144 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

stage. It likes fine gestures and brilliant stunts. It likes 
to see the little chap hit the big one, and tends to boo 
the big one if he hits back. It only makes matters worse 
if the big chap had beforehand the name of being a gen- 
erous sort of fellow; the gallery will boo him whenever he 
does not fully live up to his name. His enemies, fortu- 
nately for them, have no reputation left. They need not 
live up to anything. 

After all, the big chap has got to use his full strength 
and means to do so. He has big enemies as well as little 
ones. And, big as he is, he has no such vast store of super- 
fluous muscle. Blame him by all means if he cheats* or 
bullies; but it is hard to blame him very much because 
in a great danger he does not always spare his enemies. 



III. The Future of Ireland 

(March 18, 1917) 

So all is well as regards Ireland? I am content, am 
I? with the record of British statesmanship in that is- 
land? 

No. I consider the state of Ireland utterly disastrous, 
a disgrace to British statesmanship, a mockery to our 
high professions, and an extreme peril to the Empire. 

All that I assert strongly in our defence is that the 
Irish Question is not a question between two nations; 
it is an internal question. It is not the case that Eng- 
land is refusing self-government to Ireland. Almost all 
England, converted slowly and by bitter experience to 
the old Liberal policy, would give Ireland self-govern- 
ment to-morrow and be thankful. The trouble is that 
the strongest and most prosperous corner of Ireland still 



IRELAND 145 

threatens civil war if Irish self-government is granted, 
while all the rest of Ireland is seething with disaffection 
because it is not granted. 

The situation is not in the least like that between Aus- 
tria and Bosnia, Austria and Bohemia, Germany and 
Lorraine, Russia and Poland. It is not England coercing 
Ireland; it is one part of Ireland, recklessly backed by a 
small reactionary party in England, blocking the will of 
the rest. 

^ Nearly all the leading English Unionists have pub- 
licly admitted their conversion. Mr. Bonar Law him- 
self, once the leader of the pro-Ulster irreconcilables, is 
plaintively begging the Irish to say what sort of Home 
Rule they can agree upon. Mr. Garvin, perhaps the 
best and most respected of Tory journalists, tells the 
Government that it is disgraced if it cannot solve the 
Irish Question, and produces a very good Home Rule 
scheme of his own. The versatile Lord Northcliffe, whose 
journals simply wallowed in bloody insurrection in 1914, 
now makes Home Rule speeches at an Irish dinner. They 
are all Home Rulers, if only the Irish will agree among 
themselves what sort of Home Rule they will be so 
obliging as to accept. 

I do not wish to excuse the English Tories, much as I 
respect many individuals among them. They prevented 
the settlement of the Irish Question till disaster oc- 
curred, and their change of heart comes a little late. But 
our business is with the future, not with the past. Why 
is it that an Irish settlement is so difficult? 

The fault does not he with the Irish Members. Mr. 
Redmond and his followers have behaved with a broad- 
minded patriotism which is rare in political history. 



146 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

They have sunk their personal feelings, they have sub- 
mitted to strange insults and humiliations, they have 
imperilled their whole position as leaders of Irish opin- 
ion, in order to serve unreservedly the cause of the Allies. 
Those of military age, and some who were well be- 
yond it, have voluntarily enlisted or taken commissions. 
Some have been killed. The speeches of one or two of 
these Irish soldier M.P.s, such as Major W. Redmond 
and Captain Stephen Gwynne, have wrung the hearts of 
every decent Englishman in the House. Meantime the 
Irish regiments have fought in the cause of the British 
Empire with a desperate valour which ought surely to 
have earned a hundred times over the freedom of their 
own little nation. 

In the opposite scale there is nothing to be set except 
a few outbreaks of bitter speech, seldom unjustified, 
from Mr. Dillon and others; a certain fractiousness 
among the Irish free-lances, like Mr. Ginnell; and now, 
at last, after thirty months of continued disappoint- 
ment, the formal protest of the whole party against the 
Government. 

"We could trust the Irish party," some Tories may 
say, "but we cannot give the Government of Ireland to 
the Sinn Fein. And we are told that Redmond has lost 
his influence, since the Dublin rebellion." 

There is something in this argument. During the last 
few years a new party or rather a great new stream of 
thought has silently grown to importance in Ireland. 
The regular Nationalist Party had begun to suffer from 
its own success, as well as from its failure. Its success 
made it all-powerful in Ireland, leaving Ulster aside. 
Consequently, critics aver, its morale deteriorated. The 



IRELAND 147 

jobbers and time-servers who used once to persecute the 
Nationalists when they were weak, now joined them and 
got offices among them. The saloon-keepers — a ter- 
ribly powerful class in Ireland — all rushed into the 
National League and were apt to be local chairmen and 
committeemen. The great agitators grew elderly and 
stiff in the joints, and began to think more about re- 
taining their power than of leading their people to the 
light. In Ireland, as in all nations where the govern- 
ment comes in a foreign guise, there is a very low stand- 
ard of honesty in dealing with public money. Public 
service is apt to present itself rather in the light of fat 
jobs to collar or distribute, and the best way to secure 
the jobs was to belong to the National League. It is im- 
possible for a stranger to judge how much of this de- 
scription is true; it is certainly in the air in Ireland. 

Ireland has never been poor in idealists, especially in 
those of the unpractical sort. The more impulsive young 
men and women, idealist, cranky, rebellious, malcontent, 
disappointed, or whatever they were, began to turn away 
from the National League and the Parliamentary Party 
and what seemed to them the narrow-minded tyranny of 
the priests. Their energies found outlet in different chan- 
nels. There was a great revival of the Irish language. 
There was a great study of Irish antiquities, a revival of 
idealized Irish history. Hundreds of young clerks and 
shop-assistants after a hard day's work would gather at 
night to study these severe subjects and to attune their 
minds to the supposed purity and unworldliness of that 
Ancient Ireland which formed the antithesis of the 
sordid modern world. All that was modern and sordid 
they called " English" and associated with the English 
connection: prosiness, money-bags, Dublin Castle and 



148 FAITH, WAR, AND POLIGY 

its police, dirty publicans and gombeen-men, fat, cor- 
rupt aldermen prating of Nationalism, stupid priests 
and the "Freeman's Journal' ' and snubby elderly 
gentlemen and time-servers in general. That was all 
English, and the opposite of it was true Irish, the mark 
of that Ireland that had once been in the idealized past 
and must surely be born again if they only remained 
true to themselves. Let their motto be Sinn Fein, "We 
Ourselves" and their rule of life be to reject all the com- 
promises and temptations and pollutions of the great, 
ugly, English-ridden world. 

There was much absurdity, of course, in this move- 
ment. I have known enthusiasts for the revival of the 
ancient Irish language who could not, for the life of 
them, manage to learn it. They could just learn to write 
their names in it, to look well on posters when they 
addressed popular meetings. Others, who really could 
speak Irish, used to get into quaint situations by refus- 
ing to speak English. I myself was once cursed by a 
branch of the Gaelic League. The curse was in Irish, but 
the Secretary was obliging enough to enclose a French 
translation of it, explaining that he would not demean 
himself by using the English dialect. He came to dinner 
a few days later and was extremely agreeable. The last 
I heard of him, he was fined two pounds for refusing to 
answer a policeman in any language but Irish. 

There was also, besides the idealism and besides the 
absurdity, an element of extreme danger. To reject 
compromise is all very well if you are absolutely right; 
but it becomes deadly dangerous if you are, like most 
other human beings since the creation of the world, a 
little wrong in your foundations. It is so easy to think 
you are heroically striking down triumphant Evil and 



IRELAND 149 

then find that you have only murdered a good-natured 
policeman, with several children, while he was lighting 
his pipe. 

The great mischief wrought by Sinn Fein has been to 
destroy the hopes of the constitutional Home Rule 
movement. The quarrels which are the bane of Irish 
politics began soon to affect it. The Sinn Feiners di- 
rected their special hatred towards the Irish Parliamen- 
tary Party. It was contemptible to go trafficking with 
England about Ireland's liberties. No true Irishman 
ought to enter the doors of a British Parliament. Home 
Rule would be worthless if they got it. It would still 
leave them dependent on England. Complete separa- 
tion was the goal, and the method was simply to ignore 
England's existence. Let their elected M.P.'s stay in 
Ireland and form a separate body; let them all refuse to 
pay British taxes or obey British laws, and oppose a 
passive resistance to all England's attempts to exert 
authority. As for the Nationalist Members, no doubt it 
was a pleasant enough job for them, to draw four hun- 
dred pounds a year and have a good time in London, 
hobnobbing with English Liberals and pretending to 
work for a Home Rule that never came and never would 
come. The true way to serve Ireland was to die for Ire- 
land. Let the Nationalists do that, and Ireland would 
follow them! 

The taunt was essentially foolish, and all the more 
unfair, since at the time thousands of brave Irishmen 
were really fighting and dying in the common cause, con- 
vinced that in saving France and England they would 
save Ireland too. But the state of mind which pro- 
duced it was a dangerous one. 

When the rising in Dublin came, one of the things 



150 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

that surprised many observers was the ferocity shown 
by various boys and young women. Young women com- 
mitted unprovoked murders, lads shot wounded soldiers 
in their hospital clothes, boys of fourteen refused to sur- 
render and fought to the death. Such is the effect on 
crude and unbalanced minds of a gospel of hatred em- 
bittered by small irritations and persecutions. It ex- 
plains how a small section of the Sinn Fein, educated and 
in some ways high-minded men, allowed themselves to be 
dragged into a mad and criminal enterprise, which was 
certain to recoil heavily against their country. A few 
old, embittered Fenians, some gangs of Dublin roughs, 
and a number of the malcontents left behind by some 
desperate strikes in 1914 account for the rest of the 
rebels. 

The rising took a week to put down, and at the end of 
it sixteen men were executed. It was not a large num- 
ber. There can have been very few cases in history 
where so serious an outbreak has been followed by so 
few executions. But Ireland is a great sounding-board, 
and the sixteen executions have reechoed through the 
world. Austria, I believe, has executed over ten thou- 
sand Bohemians since the war began. 

But no Government sheds blood in Ireland with im- 
punity. The sixteen are now martyrs, and the mov- 
ing details of their deaths have become household 
words. 

In considering the Irish Question a man finds himself 
continually saying, "It would be all right if only so-and- 
so had not happened!" If only Carson had not been 
allowed to preach civil war; or if only there had not been 
the Dublin rising; or, even after the rising, if there had 



IRELAND 151 

not been the executions; or, even after the executions, 
if only there had not been wholesale imprisonments of 
suspects till the jails were crowded! And now people 
say, since most of the suspects were fairly soon released, 
if only there had not been the deportations of Sinn 
Feiners without trial ! (Some people add, if only Dublin 
Castle and the British War Office were gifted with tact 
and sympathy when dealing with individuals whom they 
do not like: but the people who expect that, live in 
dreams.) 

Deportation is a harsh and exasperating form of 
governmental precaution. A man is living peacefully 
with his wife and family in some Irish town, earning his 
living by serving in a shop or by writing for a suspect 
newspaper. Suddenly the police ring the bell, produce 
an order from a military authority, and tell him he is to 
live till further orders in Birmingham or Oxford or some 
other place where he is a stranger. No harm is done to 
him; he is not even a prisoner. But meantime he loses 
his livelihood, his house is left on his hands, he probably 
finds it difficult to get any paid work in his new place of 
residence, and his family, whether they follow him or 
stay behind, are left in a very awkward position. 

And yet, what else is an unfortunate Government to 
do? I was talking a few days ago to a deporte, an agree- 
able and well-read man of much intellectual distinc- 
tion, for whom I was trying to get some work. He 
was complaining bitterly that no charge had been made 
against him; he was an absolutely innocent man. I ven- 
tured to ask him: "Suppose a German submarine had 
come, laden with arms, to the bay where you lived, and 
asked you to distribute them through the district, what 
would you have done?" 



152 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

He hesitated a moment. "The bay is too rocky; they 
could not bring a submarine there. . . . Well, if they 
had, I don't know what I 'd have done. . . . Yes, I *d 
have distributed them." 

It was candid of him to speak so frankly. But, after 
all, can you much blame a Government if, in the midst of 
a long and very terrible war, it refuses to allow people 
who would help the Germans if they could to live in 
places where their help would be effective? For my part 
I cannot. 

There is no use in reproaches. Everybody can make 
them, and everybody has deserved them. There is no 
use in recalling the wrongs and just resentments of the 
past. Nothing will help in the Irish Question but abso- 
lute mutual forgiveness and absolute concentration on 
the future. 

As an intellectual problem the Irish Question is not 
very difficult; nothing like as difficult as the Federation 
of South Africa, for instance. The only difficulty lies 
in faults of human nature, in self-deception, vindictive- 
ness, rooted suspicion, the devotion of the soul to party 
hatreds and the fostering of age-long feuds. 

The next move must come from Ulster. Ulster has 
beaten the rest of Ireland. She has beaten England, 
Scotland, and Wales. She can afford to yield a little. 
The one strong defence to be made for the inclusion of 
Sir Edward Carson in the British Government, against 
which he was lately conspiring, is that a Carson Gov- 
ernment can do what no other Government can, in the 
way of appeasing Ireland. Let the present Government 
grant, in any reasonable form, some sort of Home Rule 
to Ireland, and the Ulster Covenanters can surely not 



IRELAND 153 

feel injured or humiliated. They can smile a grim smile, 
and feel that, since they have clearly shown their 
Catholic fellow countrymen who was master, they do 
not so much mind admitting that they are all Irish- 
men. 



IX 

AMERICA AND THE WAR 

(August, 1916) 



It is dangerous to comment too freely on the psy- 
chology of foreign nations. I knew a man who held 
the opinion that Americans cared for only three things 
in the world: comfort, money, and safety — objects 
which notoriously inspire aversion in the normal Briton. 
And he explained this view at some length to two young 
Americans, one of whom had been working fourteen 
hours a day for the relief of distress in Belgium, while the 
other, with a sad disregard for truth and the feelings of 
his parents, had passed himself off as a Canadian in 
order to fight in the British Army. 

I know another man, an American man of letters, who 
went off at his own expense at the time of the Ger- 
man advance in Poland to help the Polish refugees. He 
worked for months on end among people starving and 
dying of typhus, often going without food himself and 
entirely abstaining from some of the most ordinary com- 
forts of life. When I last met him he had seen a thou- 
sand people dead around him at one time. He was then 
on his way back to continue his work, and I felt some 
nervousness on hearing he was to pass through England. 
I have an inward feeling that some one at this moment is 
explaining to him that Americans ask no questions about 
the war except how much money they can make out of 



AMERICA AND THE WAR 155 

it, and the one thing you can be sure of about a Yank is 
that he will be too proud to fight. 

This particular man will very likely not retaliate. He 
will smile sadly and search his conscience, and reflect 
sympathetically that people who are suffering cannot 
help being irritable. But some millions of his fellow 
countrymen will answer for him, and they have rather a 
pretty wit when they set about answering. A placard 
over a certain large cinema show in New York once put 
the point neatly: ENGLISHMEN! YOUR KING AND 
COUNTRY WANT YOU. WE DON'T. 

The beauty of that statement is that it finishes the 
matter and leaves nothing to argue about. But if you 
are unwise enough to wish to argue, you will find ample 
material. Think of all the things, to begin with, that 
are said against England by Englishmen. Remember 
all the things that your most Radical friends have said 
in the past against the Tories and imperialists, and add 
to it all that the Tories used to say about Lloyd George; 
double it by all that the U.D.C. on the one hand and 
Mr. Maxse and the " Morning Post" on the other are 
saying about every one who does not worship in their 
own particular tabernacles; sum them all together, and 
put in front of them the words: " Honest Englishmen 
themselves confess — "! The effect will be quite sur- 
prising. It would be no wonder if the simple-minded 
American should feel some prejudice against a nation 
whose leaders are all in the pay of Germany and whose 
working-classes spend their lives in a constant debauch; 
a nation which makes up for its inefficiency in the field 
by riotous levity at home, by ferocious persecution of 
conscience and free speech, and by the extreme blood- 
thirstiness of its ultimate intentions towards the enemy. 



156 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

The wonder is that he feels it so little; that some sane 
instinct generally helps him to know the grosser kind of 
lie when he sees it, and some profound consciousness of 
ultimate brotherhood between the two great English- 
speaking peoples is so much stronger than all the recur- 
rent incidents of superficial friction. 

The main cause of friction is, without doubt, that in 
the greatest crisis of our history we expected more from 
America than she was disposed to give. We felt to her 
a little as the Danes felt towards us in 1864, as the 
French felt towards us in 1870. When Belgium was 
invaded, when the Lusitania was sunk, the average Eng- 
lishman did, without doubt, look expectantly towards 
America, and America did not respond to our expecta- 
tions. Were those expectations reasonable and natural, 
or were they not? 

The answer seems to me quite clear. They were en- 
tirely natural, but not quite reasonable. We could not 
help feeling them; but it was not at all likely that the 
average American voter would feel as we did. How 
should he? One need not speak of the six million Ger- 
mans, and the innumerable other aliens in the United 
States; nor yet of the traditional anti-British feeling in 
the political "mob." The plain fact is that nations do 
not go to war for remote philanthropic objects. They 
get near it sometimes, as we got near it with Turkey in 
1895, over the Armenian massacres. But they do not 
go over the edge, except where the philanthropic in- 
dignation is reinforced by other motives or causes of 
quarrel. And even there, time is needed to awake a 
whole nation. Mental preparation is needed; the culprit 
must have a bad character already; the proof of the 
crime committed must be exceedingly clear. None of 



AMERICA AND THE WAR 157 

these conditions was present in 1914. The Germans were 
greatly respected in the United States. There had been 
a powerful and assiduous court paid to American opin- 
ion. Every single crime committed by Germany was 
accompanied by a cloud of dust and counter-accusation. 
It was the Russians who insisted on war; it was France 
which invaded Belgium; it was the Belgian women and 
children who committed atrocities on the German sol- 
diers; it was the English who used explosive bullets and 
poisonous gas; I forget whether it was the Lusitania 
which tried to sink the poor submarine, or if that was 
only the Arabic; but at every single point at which the 
national indignation of America might have exploded 
the issue was confused and befogged. We should remem- 
ber the immortal words of the Pope, when confronted by 
the twentieth or thirtieth demonstration of the bestiali- 
ties done by the Germans in Belgium: "But, you know, 
they say they didn't." The same answer was always 
open, not only to Colonel Bryan (why should that emi- 
nent pacifist be denied his full claim to military glory?), 
but to men of much less nebulous judgement than he. 

No; it was not reasonable to expect the United States 
to plunge into war for motives of philanthropy. And if 
one begins to put the question on other grounds, then 
clearly it is not for us foreigners to decide what course 
best suits the interest or dignity of the United States. 
They know their own case, pro and con, far better than 
we can, and we certainly need not complain of either the 
skill or the fervour with which our friends in that great, 
strange country have stated our case. 

But the matter is decided. America will not join in 
this war. Both political parties are united on that point; 
and only a few voices of independent thinkers, voices 



158 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

sometimes of great weight and eloquence, are lifted in 
protest. I do not, of course, say that there might not 
arise some new and unexpected issue which would com- 
pel her to change her policy; but, so far as the issues are 
now known, the Americans have made up their minds 
to have no war. 

Such a decision has, of course, had its consequences. 
Any person who, after hesitating, comes to a decision 
likes afterwards to have as many grounds as possible for 
justifying himself, and the same holds of a nation. If 
America had, for good or evil, plunged into the war, she 
would have found easily a thousand reasons for being 
enthusiastic about it and for justifying her intimate sym- 
pathy with us. It is now the other way. She cannot help 
feeling a certain coldness towards people who, as she 
thinks, tempted her to dangerous courses; who certainly 
felt, however unreasonably, a shade of disappointment 
about her. What right had we to be disappointed; to 
hint by our manner, if not by words, that she had chosen 
safety rather than the beau rdle f After all, why should 
she fight England's battles? Wicked as the Germans 
are, — and hardly any normal American defends them, 
— is England so entirely disinterested and blameless? Is 
Ireland so much more contented than Alsace-Lorraine? 
Do the " Black List" and the Paris Resolutions and the 
"Orders in Council" suggest that the new Liberal Eng- 
land is so very different from the old England that was 
America's natural enemy? The President has used lan- 
guage which looks like a repudiation of all moral or hu- 
man interest in Europe's quarrels: "With the causes 
and objects of the war America is not concerned." I do 
not believe that the President himself really would hold 
to that dictum, and I am sure his countrymen would 



AMERICA AND THE WAR 159 

not. The principle is too cynical for either. But, so far 
as direct public action is concerned, that statement 
holds the field. Belgium, Armenia, Poland, Miss Cavell, 
the horrors of Wittenberg, the wholesale deportations 
of women, the habitual killing of unarmed civilians; all 
these are to count as matters of indifference for the ex- 
ecutive government of the United States. 

But not for the human beings who compose the United 
States, whether in the Government or out of it. The 
more they have decided not to intervene publicly in the 
war, the more they are ready to pour out their sym- 
pathy, their work, and their riches to help the distresses 
of the war. Never was there a nation so generous, so 
ready in sympathy, so quick to respond to the call of suf- 
fering. They exceed England in these qualities almost as 
much as England exceeds the average of Europe. They 
will stand aloof from the savage old struggle, free, un- 
polluted, rejoicing in their own peace and exceeding 
prosperity, but always ready to send their missionaries 
and almoners to bind the wounds of more benighted 
lands. The wars of Europe are not their business. 

Unless, indeed, after the war, the victor should come 
out too powerful? A victorious Germany is fortunately 
out of the question; but a victorious England — might 
not that bring trouble? America must after all be 
" prepared." 

II 

It is hard for an Englishman to understand how a very 
great nation, a very proud nation, whom we, accustomed 
to range the whole circuit of the world and find our 
brothers trading or governing in the antipodes, look 



160 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

upon instinctively as our own kinsmen and natural 
friends, should be content to stay apart from the great 
movement of the world and to strike no blow either for 
democracy or absolutism; to leave it to others to decide 
whether peace or war shall be the main regulator of 
national life, whether treaties shall be sacred or not, 
whether or not "government of the people, by the peo- 
ple, for the people" shall perish from the greater part 
of the earth. And many Americans feel as we do. The 
most brilliant and magnetic of America's recent Presi- 
dents feels as we do. But, as a rule, I believe, the aver- 
age American is not only content, but proud to stand 
thus aloof and indifferent. The line of thought leading 
to such a pride is one familiar to many generations of 
Americans, the glory of their immense isolation. 

Why should they turn back to mix again in the misery 
and blood-guiltiness of that evil Old World from which 
their fathers and mothers fled? They will forgive it, 
now that they are free and safe. They will forgive it, 
they will revisit it sometimes with a kind of affection, 
they will pour out their abundant riches to alleviate its 
sufferings, but they will never again be entangled in its 
schemes and policies, they will never again give it power 
over them. 

Generation after generation of American settlers 
have been refugees from European persecution. Refugee 
Puritans, refugee Quakers, refugee Catholics, French 
Huguenots, English and German Republicans, in later 
days persecuted Jews and Poles and Russian revolu- 
tionaries, have all found shelter and freedom in America, 
and most of them some degree of prosperity and public 
respect. And far more numerous than these definite 
sufferers from religious or political persecution have been 



AMERICA AND THE WAR 161 

the swarms of settlers who, for one reason or another, 
had found life too hard in the Old World. In every gen- 
eration the effect is repeated. Europe is the place that 
people fly from; the place of tyrants and aristocracies, 
of wars and crooked diplomacy; the place where the 
poor are so miserable that they leave their homes 
and families and spend their last shillings in order to 
work at the lowest manual labour in the one land on 
earth which will really assure them "life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness." No wonder it is easy for an 
American to reject all responsibility for the troubles of 
Europe ! 

Nay, when you meet an American who is really in- 
terested in Europe, you will be surprised to find how 
little he cares for the things that we consider liberal or 
progressive. Such things are not what he wants of Eu- 
rope. He can get them at home. He likes Europe to be 
European. What he asks of Europe is picturesqueness; 
old castles, and Louis XIV, and Austrian rules of eti- 
quette, and an unreformed House of Lords. When we 
reform such things away, he is rather regretful, as we in 
England might be at the Chinese cutting off their pig- 
tails. In his leisure hours he likes us as we are, and when 
it comes to business his only determination is that we 
shall never again interfere with him. 

I do not say that such an attitude is wise or right; 
much less that it is universal in America. But it is a state 
of mind which is easily intelligible and which must 
always be reckoned with. 

A Liberal Englishman will quite understand it. He 
may, perhaps, regard it with a good deal of sympathy, 
and even imagine that it must lead on the whole to a 
feeling of friendliness towards England as contrasted 



162 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

with the less liberal Powers. But it is not so. Every 
large wave of feeling demands a human representative or 
symbol, and the course of history has decreed that to 
the average American the symbol of European tyranny 
is England. He knows, of course, that the Government 
of Russia or Prussia or Austria or divers other nations 
may be much worse than that of England; but his own 
historical quarrel, repeated through many generations, 
has been with England, and the typical fight for human 
freedom against tyranny is the American War of Inde- 
pendence; next to that comes the War of 1812. The 
cause is now won. Freedom is safe, and his relations 
with England are peaceful, and even friendly. Yet the 
price of freedom is eternal vigilance. When he hears the 
words " Orders in Council," "Restriction of Trade," 
" Right of Search," " Black List," something argumenta- 
tive and anxious rises within him. When he hears that 
some person has been condemned as a rebel against the 
British Government, he tends to murmur, "So was 
George Washington!" 

No; he bears no grudge against his old enemy, but 
England belongs to Europe, not to America; and she can 
stay where she belongs. For his part, what does he want 
with other nations? 

He is a citizen of the greatest free nation in the world, 
and not only the greatest, but, by every sane standard 
that he believes in, infinitely the best. It has a larger 
white population than the whole British Empire. Its 
men and women are more prosperous, cleaner, better 
paid, better fed, better dressed, better educated, better 
in physique than any others on the face of the globe. 
They have simpler and saner ideals, more kindliness and 
common sense, more enterprise, and more humanity. 



AMERICA AND THE WAR 163 

Silly people in Europe, blind, like their ancestors, im- 
agine that America somehow lacks culture, and must 
look abroad for its art and learning; why, as a matter of 
fact, the greatest sculptor since Michael Angelo was an 
American, Saint-Gaudens; the two best painters of the 
last decades, Abbey and Sargent, were both Americans; 
up to last year the most famous English novelist was an 
American; the best public architecture is notoriously to 
be found in America, as well as the best public concerts 
and libraries, and the most important foundations for 
scientific research. And to crown our friend's confident 
picture, there is no country on earth where the children 
are so happy. 

A friend of mine stayed last year in a summer camp 
of young men and women in a forest in the Middle West, 
and never once heard the European War mentioned. 
One night, as they looked over a moonlit lake, a young 
student spoke thoughtfully of the peacefulness of the 
scene, and of the contrast it made with the terrible 
sufferings of mankind elsewhere. My friend agreed, 
and murmured something about the sufferings of 
Europe. "Lord, I was n't thinking of Europe," said the 
young man: "I was thinking of the thunderstorms in 
Dakota." 

If only they could really remain aloof! But they can- 
not. There is at least one Power with whom they are 
constantly in contact, and whose world-wide interests 
are constantly rubbing against theirs both by land and 
sea; and that Power is Great Britain. 

"When two empires find their interests continually 
rubbing against each other in different parts of the 
world," said Sir Edward Grey in 1911, "there is no half- 
way house possible between constant liability to friction 



164 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

and cordial friendship." That is the gentle and states- 
manlike way of putting it. An eloquent American, 
whose speech this year has been circulated widely across 
the continent, phrased the matter more strongly. He 
advocated definitely a British alliance on the ground 
that between two nations so intimately connected and 
touching each other at so many points there is no third 
way: it must be either alliance or war. Yet alliance, 
after what we have seen, seems impossible; and war can- 
not even for an instant be thought of. It would be the 
last disgrace to the modern world, the final downfall of 
civilization. 

Let us try to consider what forces are working in 
either direction. 



Ill 

" Either alliance or war" ! It sounds at first hearing a 
fantastic exaggeration. Yet the words have been spoken 
by sober-minded people, and it is worth while trying to 
think them out. It is easy for an Englishman to find in 
America confirmation of whatever opinions he happens 
to hold, and terribly easy for him to get the proportional 
importance of such opinions completely wrong. Indigna- 
tion with Germany and horror at her cruelties; emotion 
about the Irish rebellion and its suppression; irritation 
at the Black List; angry alarm at the Paris Resolu- 
tions; a general desire for kindness to everybody, and 
especially for a quick and generous peace — all these 
waves of sentiment, and many others, are to be found in 
America, and possess their own importance and influ- 
ence. But it seems to me that there are two currents of 
feeling that have swept the whole continent, and are 



AMERICA AND THE WAR 165 

likely, whatever party is in power, to shape the effective 
policy of the United States. 

The first reaction produced by the war and the de- 
termination not to participate in it has been the move- 
ment for " Preparedness." It is first a preparedness for 
war. England, according to popular opinion, had been 
unprepared, and France not much better. America, had 
she tried to enter the war, would have been more utterly 
unprepared than either. Suppose the German attack 
had fallen on her? 

The direction of this first movement has gradually 
changed with the course of events. The campaign of 
" Preparedness" presupposes some possible or probable 
aggressor, and it has gradually become clear that that 
aggressor will not, for many years to come, be Germany. 
The prospect of a really victorious Germany would 
shake America to her foundations and probably change 
completely the national policy; but there is now no such 
prospect. The danger, if there is any, will come from 
a victorious Great Britain, allied, as America always 
remembers, with a victorious and unexhausted Japan. 
Other neutral nations in this war may be waiting to side 
with the conqueror; but America is built on too large 
a scale for that. She will arm against the conqueror, and 
be prodigal of help to the vanquished. 

The "Preparedness" campaign is still in its early 
stages and has not assumed its definite form. But it 
started as a spontaneous non-party movement; it was 
taken up by the Republican Opposition; it was eagerly 
supported by President Wilson and his Government; it 
has been clearly thought out and firmly developed by 
Mr. Hughes. Army, navy, and mercantile marine are 
all to be increased and developed; but it is noteworthy 



166 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

that more stress is laid on the navy than on the army, 
and politicians have already uttered the ominous phrase, 
"A fleet that shall not be at the mercy of the British 
fleet"! More important still must be the preparation 
for a great mercantile rivalry. Vast sums have already 
been appropriated for shipbuilding, and other steps, too, 
are to be taken to secure for America her proper position 
in shipping and in foreign trade. No more dependence 
upon English bottoms! Competition will be very severe. 
At the end of the war, Mr. Hughes warned the audience 
in his Notification Speech, "the energies of each of the 
new belligerent nations, highly trained, will be turned 
to production. These are days of terrible discipline for 
the nations at war. . . . Each is developing a national 
solidarity, a knowledge of method, a realization of ca- 
pacity hitherto unapproached." Mr. Hughes is too wise 
and broad-minded to put his thought in a threatening 
shape. But most of his hearers throughout that vast hall 
thought of the Resolutions of Paris, and felt that if the 
Allies chose to pursue war methods in their commercial 
action, America must be ready to respond. 

One's heart sinks at the prospect opened out by this 
policy. Trade rivalry; severe protection; the State 
deliberately entering into the commercial contest with 
subsidies and penalties; competitive shipbuilding; the 
desire for a strong navy behind the merchant fleet; and 
at the end of a vista that prize which has dazzled so 
many nations, some of them perhaps not much less 
peace-loving and level-headed than the United States, 
the position of recognized centrality and supremacy 
among the great nations of the world. 

Is there no prospect of escape? 

Yes, there is. The above is the first great current of 



AMERICA AND THE WAR 167 

feeling that, in my judgement, has swept the whole peo- 
ple of the United States; the second is the antidote to it, 
and is almost, if not quite, equally strong. It is the de- 
termination that, if America can help it, a colossal ini- 
quity like the present war shall not be allowed to occur 
again. The feeling needs no explanation. It is that of 
every Englishman of moderately liberal feelings, and is 
deeply ingrained in the nature of the ordinary American. 
It has swept through all political parties and most other 
sections of the community, except a few extreme paci- 
fists and those pro-Germans who are working for an 
inconclusive peace and a second war. 

It was first formulated by Mr. Taft, as president of the 
League to Enforce Peace. Mr. Taft's series of arbitra- 
tion treaties, following on those initiated by John Hay, 
made him the natural champion of this further effort 
to organize the prevention of future wars. The general 
idea is quite simple and well known: a League of Powers, 
bound to settle their differences by conference or arbitra- 
tion, and equally bound to make joint war on any Power 
which, in a dispute with one of them, refuses arbitration 
and insists on war. 

The plan was immediately welcomed by public opinion 
in the States. It spread everywhere. President Wilson 
committed himself to it last May in an emphatic speech, 
which was perhaps a little too tenderly tactful towards 
the Germans to be whole-heartedly acceptable in Eng- 
land. But in point of fact most of the leaders of English 
thought had already expressed approval of the princi- 
ple. It is no less significant that the federated Chamber 
of Commerce of the United States, a powerful and ex- 
tremely cautious body, has voted by large majorities in 
favour of the policy of the League, and by overwhelming 



168 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

majorities for all the proposals but one. (Just over a 
third of the delegates shrank from committing them- 
selves to actual war for the sake of peace, though they 
were ready to agree to an absolute boycott of the peace- 
breaker.) And, finally,* Mr. Hughes, in his Notification 
Address, has thrown the whole strength of the Republi- 
can Party into the scheme. His words are well thought 
out: " We are deeply interested in what I may term the 
organization of peace. We cherish no illusions. We know 
that the recurrence of war is not to be prevented by 
pious wishes. If the conflict of national interests is not 
to be brought to the final test of force, there must be a 
development of international organization in order to 
provide international justice and to safeguard as far as 
practicable the peace of the world." In addition to the 
International Tribunal and the sanction of armed force 
behind it, "there are also legislative needs. We need 
conferences of the nations to formulate international 
rules, to establish principles, to modify and extend in- 
ternational law so as to adapt it to new conditions and 
remove causes of international difference." 

This is obviously no fantastic scheme. It is accepted 
by the leaders of both parties, and by the enormous pre- 
ponderance of American opinion, both progressive and 
conservative, both educated and uneducated. It is only 
rejected by the open enemies of England and by some of 
the extreme pacifists. 

It is hard at present for the leaders of a belligerent 
nation to come prominently forward in favour of such 
a scheme as this. For one thing they cannot act without 
their allies; for another, they must not lay themselves 
open to the charge that they are spending their time and 
thought on any object but the winning of the war. Still, 



AMERICA AND THE WAR 169 

there is little doubt about the general attitude of the 
leaders of public opinion in England towards a scheme of 
this kind. Mr. Asquith, Mr. Balfour, and Viscount Grey, 
among others, have spoken pretty clearly. 

"Long before this war," said the last-named, on May 
15, 1916, "I hoped for a league of nations that would be 
united, quick, and instant to prevent, and, if need be, 
to punish the violation of international treaties, of pub- 
lic right, of national independence, and would say to na- 
tions that came forward with grievances and claims: 
' Put them before an impartial tribunal. If you can win 
at this bar, you will get what you want. If you cannot, 
you shall not have what you want. And if instead you 
attempt to start a war, we shall adjudge you the com- 
mon enemy of humanity and treat you accordingly/ 
Unless mankind learns from this war to avoid war, the 
struggle will have been in vain." 

Almost all opinion in England agrees; so, as far as 
my information goes, does opinion in France. But in 
America the course of events has brought the move- 
ment more sharply to the front and faced it with a far 
more emphatic alternative. If we and our allies respond 
to this movement, there is good hope for the world; the 
enemy may respond or not, as he prefers. If we reject 
it, there is before us, not merely the possibility of some 
unknown future war, such as there was before the pres- 
ent shaping of the nations: there is a peril clearer and 
more precise. There are definite seeds of international 
rivalry already sown and growing; there are on both 
sides of the Atlantic the deliberate beginnings of a move- 
ment which, however justifiable at present, needs but 
a little development to become dangerous; there is the 
certain prospect of those thousand disputes which are 



170 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

bound to arise between two great commercial nations 
competing hard for the same markets. 

American preparedness will soon be an accomplished 
fact; American readiness for a League to Enforce Peace 
after the war is probably a fact already. We must not, 
of course, be precipitate; we must not forget that our 
actual allies have obviously the first claim on us. We 
must not make any claim as of right on the sympathy 
of the United States, or ask her for a jot more than she 
is prepared to offer. But in the end it will rest largely, 
though not entirely, with us in Great Britain to decide 
whether that preparedness shall be merely an instru- 
ment for the promotion of American interests against 
those of her rivals, or a great force to work in conjunc- 
tion with us and our friends for organizing the peace 
of the world. On those lines alliance will be possible 
after all. 



X 

AMERICA AND ENGLAND 1 

(November, 1916) 

Your Excellency, Lord Bryce, Ladies and Gen- 
tlemen: — 

I confess that from my boyhood up, long before I had 
any knowledge to support the instinctive feeling, I have 
felt an ardent and even romantic interest in America. 
After all, America is the great representative of de- 
mocracy, and the man who has no faith in democracy 
really confesses that he has no faith in the human race. 
And still more America in a peculiar way represents the 
hopes of the future. She embodies the greatest experi- 
ment known to history at escaping from the trammels 
of the past, while using the experience of the past, and 
starting humanity afresh with a clean slate. Such an 
experiment could not, of course, be confined to the mem- 
bers of a single nation. It must throw open its arms to a 
large part of the world. And we in Great Britain may 
well be satisfied with the share that we have taken and 
still possess in this building-up of the nation of the clean 
slate. 

You will hardly expect me to speak about the Presi- 
dential election. We all think about it ; but it is ground 
on which Mr. Roosevelt himself would recognize that 
an Englishman, if he walks at all, must walk "pussy- 
footedly." The one fact that stands out most promi- 

1 Address to the Mayflower Club, November 14, 1916. 



172 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

nently to an observer at a distance is the high personal 
quality of both the candidates. The record of American 
Presidents as a whole is a great testimonial to democ- 
racy; and it is certainly true in the present instance that, 
in force of character, in integrity, and in intellectual 
power, both candidates are men of the highest rank, who 
would do honour to any Cabinet in the world. On the 
matter with which in England we are most concerned, — 
the war in Europe, — we may also claim that both can- 
didates have — what shall I say? I will not say any 
predilection in favour of the Allies, for I believe them 
to be just and impartial; but they both have the thing 
which to us matters most, some real understanding of 
the aims and causes, the nature and origin, of the con- 
flict. 

Ladies and gentlemen, if you take a long view of his- 
tory I think you will find that we stand now at a dra- 
matic and momentous point. You in America are to his- 
tory a nation of refugees, a nation built up by men and 
women who fled over a thousand leagues of inhospitable 
sea to escape from the oppressions and entanglements 
of Europe, and especially, in your early days, from those 
of Great Britain. English Cavaliers, Puritans, Quakers, 
Catholics, Scotch Presbyterians, have all helped to 
build you up. In later generations, when there was no 
more need for people to fly for refuge from Great Brit- 
ain, came the refugees of central and eastern Europe, 
and fragments of all the peoples that are still ground 
down by domestic poverty or the misgovernment of the 
Turk. It is, perhaps, a paradox to speak of your great 
and powerful continent at the present time as a nation 
of refugees. But I think the memory of your origin still 
affects your policy and certainly still haunts your imag- 



AMERICA AND ENGLAND 173 

ination. Most nations have some sort of legendary con- 
ception of themselves, some fable convenue in which they 
instinctively believe, even when it has ceased to cor- 
respond with the facts. I believe great masses of people 
in America unconsciously think of themselves as refu- 
gees like their ancestors, and of Great Britain as a coun- 
try of lords and flunkeys, pickpockets and John-Bull- 
like farmers in swallowtail coats, still governed by 
George III and Lord North or the "Sea Tyrants of 
1813." When we wish to speak to you as brothers, you 
remember that we are the elder brothers who cast you 
out. 

And now a cause has arisen, a need, a momentous 
issue, in which we as a nation, both those who cast your 
fathers out and those who comforted your fathers and 
remained in England fighting for the same causes as 
they, are constrained to appeal to you as brothers. Not 
necessarily for military help ! Do not imagine that. So 
far as we can see, we have full confidence in ourselves 
and our allies. But we appeal to you, first of all, to 
understand us. It is intolerable to us, intolerable for all 
the future hope of humanity, that this our testimony of 
blood, this our martyrdom for a cause which we hold 
sacred, should be regarded by you, our friends and 
brothers across the Atlantic, as a mere quarrel of angry 
dogs over a bone. We have made our appeal and a large 
part of America has responded magnificently, with that 
swiftness of brain, that ready sympathy and generosity, 
which are so characteristically American. I know no 
better statements on the diplomatic causes of the war, 
at any rate among neutral nations, than some of those 
that were published quite early in the Eastern States. 
But other parts of your nation had gone too far off to 



174 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

hear us. They had built up their own life too independ- 
ently to care about our troubles. I believe also that the 
very magnitude of the cause at issue makes it difficult 
for us to explain and for them to understand. How shall 
we try to state that cause, to put into words, however 
imperfect, the centre of our profound feeling? It is a 
difficult task. 

"Government of the people, by the people, for the 
people"? That is a principle which Americans have paid 
for with their blood and which they understand with 
* every fibre of their being. But is it exactly democracy 
for which we are fighting? The Republic of France, the 
limited monarchy of England, and the autocracy of 
Russia? We sometimes say, and feel, that we are fight- 
ing for democracy, and in a sense it is true ; but democ- 
racy alone cannot be the exact definition of our cause. 

Is' it, then, a fight for civilization against barbarism? 
The thesis is difficult to maintain. In material civiliza- 
tion, at least, Germany is actually our superior. The 
organization of German trade, of railways, of schools, 
even of things intellectual, seems, at least to a super- 
ficial glance, to be the acme of civilization. To speak of 
the Germans as barbarians may in some profounder 
sense have truth in it, but in the ordinary meaning of the 
words it is a paradox. 

Some people again have tried to tell the Americans 
that we were fighting for Christianity against Godless- 
ness, but that is not, as it stands, a very persuasive 
statement. They can point to many saintly lives in 
Germany; the bookshelves of their professors of divin- 
ity are loaded with German books of devotion and theol- 
ogy; and I hardly imagine that we and our French allies 
make quite the impression of a nation of early Christians. 



AMERICA AND ENGLAND 175 

None of these statements seems exactly adequate, 
yet there is some profound truth underlying all of them. 
I do not suppose that my own definition will stand crit- 
icism much better than these I have mentioned, but I 
will venture to put to you the way in which the issue 
strikes me. You remember the old philosophical doc- 
trine of the " Social Contract" as the origin of ordered 
society; that men lived in a "state of nature," with no 
laws, no duties to one another, no relationships — 
homo homini lupus, "every man a wolf to every other 
man"; and then, finding that condition intolerable, they 
met together and made a "contract," and hence arose 
civilized society. And you will remember the criticism 
passed on the doctrine by such philosophers as T. H. 
Green : the criticism that beings in that supposed con- 
dition could not even begin to make a contract; that 
before any contract can be made, there must be some ele- 
mentary sense of relationship, of mutual duty, some ele- 
mentary instinct of public right. Before any contract is 
possible, there must be at least the elementary under- 
standing that if a man pledges his word, he should keep 
it. It is that primary understanding, that elementary 
sense of brotherhood or of public right, which it seems 
to us the present Government of Germany in its dealing 
with foreign nations has sought to stamp out of exist- 
ence. It has rejected, in the words of the King's Speech, 
"the old ordinance which has held civilized Europe to- 
gether." It has acted on a new ordinance that every 
nation shall be a wolf to its neighbour. 

Do you find that indictment hard to believe of such a 
nation as Germany? I think we can see how it came 
about. Germany is the great country of specialization. 
Above all she has produced the specialized soldier; not 



176 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

the human soldier, the Christian soldier, the chivalrous 
soldier, or the soldier with the sense of civic duties; but 
the soldier who is trained to be a soldier and nothing 
else, to disregard all the rest of human relations, to see 
all his country's neighbours merely as enemies to be 
duped and conquered, to treat all life according to some 
system of perverted biology as a mere struggle of force 
and fraud. They have created this type of soldier, able, 
concentrated, conscienceless, and remorseless, and then 
— what no other people in the world has done — they 
have given the nation over to his guidance. Of course 
we all have armies. We all have experts and strategists. 
But with the rest of us the soldier is the last resort, like 
the executioner. We call him up only when all other 
means have failed. But in Germany the soldier is al- 
ways present. He is behind the diplomatist, behind the 
educator, behind the preacher; he is behind the philoso- 
pher in his study and the man of science in his labora- 
tory; always present and always in authority. In other 
nations the sword is the servant of the public welfare, a 
savage servant never used but in the last necessity; in 
Germany all the resources of the nation are the servants 
of the sword. 

How far can America be brought to see this or in 
general to understand our cause? Roughly speaking, I 
think it would be true to say that the most instructed 
part of America — New York, Boston, and the Eastern 
States — understood early. They understood rapidly 
and acutely and they responded generously. The rest of 
America is gradually learning to understand. I met, in 
my recent visit to the United States, two men, both ex- 
ceptionally good witnesses and of different sides in home 



AMERICA AND ENGLAND 177 

politics, who had journeyed right across the continent 
about a year ago and again recently; and they both made 
the same report: that the knowledge and the feeling of 
the comparatively small part of America which under- 
stands and studies European affairs were spreading 
steadily from East to West. They had reached much 
farther this year than a year ago. 

The position of our cause in America is not unsatis- 
factory. Both the Presidential candidates, as I have 
said, understand it. In speaking of them, whether they 
differ from us or not, no one would have to explain 
things from the beginning. Again, in the recent election, 
though naturally neither party actually turned away 
votes that offered themselves, there was no party which 
would dare openly to admit that it was pro-German, 
cnly a small, disorganized faction on both sides. I think 
we may also say that such points of difference as we 
have had with the United States during the war — and 
such points of difference are absolutely bound to arise 
— have been treated by the Government and the ma- 
jority of the people of the United States, I will not say 
with any special indulgence towards us, but at least in 
a spirit of great fairness and neighbourly good-will. Of 
course America will not fight. What nation in history 
ever did fight from motives of pure philanthropy and 
sympathy in a war four thousand miles away? Of course 
America will not fight — unless, that is, the war should 
take some new and unexpected turn directly menacing 
her interests. But in many ways America can help 
or hinder us in the war; and especially it is America 
more than any other nation which will register the 
opinion of the neutral world. We believe that we 
and our allies can show that militarism is a failure: 



178 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

we want America to pronounce judgement that it is 
wicked. 

Instructed America is already overwhelmingly with 
us. The great interest of the present situation is that 
by the issue of the Presidential election it is uninstructed 
America that is now largely in power. (When I say " in- 
structed" and "uninstructed/' I mean, of course, " in- 
structed' ' and "uninstructed" as regards European 
affairs.) President Wilson has, of course, abundant 
knowledge and imagination; it is easy enough to state 
our case to him. But the great masses behind him, the 
masses of the South and West, are drawn precisely from 
the most non-European part of America, the part that 
neither knows about us nor wishes to know. It is to 
those great masses of the South and West that we have 
somehow to make ourselves understood. Many of you 
now present know them better than I do, but even I 
have known a good many. They will honestly try, I be- 
lieve, to understand us. They will bring to the task, 
perhaps, some anti- British prejudices; certainly abun- 
dant ignorance — as abundant and profound as our own 
ignorance of the affairs of Minnesota and Wyoming. 
They will bring some lack of experience, some lack of 
tradition in that delicate tact combined with firmness, 
that self-restraint, that respect for foreign nations, that 
power of seeing another's point of view, which is es- 
sential to a sound foreign policy. But they will bring 
also quickness of mind, indomitable vigour, real Ameri- 
can generosity, and a most abundant store of good-will. 
I do not think there is any nation on the earth which 
contains so large a proportion as America of people who 
really and actively wish to do right — and to feel good 
afterwards. It is to these people that we must appeal, 



AMERICA AND ENGLAND 179 

not for help in war, nor for any immediate alliance, but 
for two purposes. We must appeal to them, first, merely 
to listen and think and understand; and secondly, when 
they have realized what we are fighting for during the 
war, to work for common ends with us after the peace. 
I will not wait now to define these ends; they have been 
stated by Mr. Asquith and Lord Grey. I do not know 
exactly what form it may prove best for America's co- 
operation to take. For my own part, I follow Lord 
Bryce and Lord Grey, Mr. Taft, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. 
Hughes, as a devout believer in a league to enforce 
peace. America has made that proposal, and Lord Grey 
speaking for the Allies has announced that we are 
in favour of it. .The exact form and machinery of the 
league must, of course, remain to be settled hereafter. 
But I do not think it will be exactly that league spoken of 
by Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg, of which Germany "is quite 
willing to put herself at the head " ; nor do I imagine that 
its first object will be "to guarantee Germany from 
another invasion by Belgium." 

The truth is — and this will be one of our difficulties 
— that between us and America, as between every bel- 
ligerent and every neutral, there is one great gulf to 
bridge. Most neutrals — and especially these West- 
erners of whom I spoke — move inside a certain normal 
range of ideas. They understand the goodness of being 
sober, honest, thrifty, kind, — extraordinarily kind, — 
and even religious. They praise and admire — and even 
practise — the virtues which lie within the normal range 
of experience, that range within which to lose one's life 
is the greatest of misfortunes and to take another's life 
the greatest of crimes. But we in Great Britain have got 
beyond those barriers. We have become familiar with 



180 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

the knowledge that there are things in life which are 
greater than life. We have learnt, more than we ever 
learnt before, that the true work of mankind upon earth 
is to live for these greater things. I am not exaggerat- 
ing or using high-falutin language. Go out into the 
street and talk with the first bus-driver or cabman who 
has lost his son in the war; he may be inarticulate, but 
if once he begins to speak freely, you will find him telling 
you that he does not grudge his son's life. 

We stand outside the barriers that I have spoken of, 
and our words and gestures must seem strange to those 
within, but it is to them that we must explain ourselves. 
A picture rises to my mind as I am now speaking to 
you, a picture of New England as I motored through it 
a few months ago : the pretty, prosperous country towns; 
the workmen's settlements, especially in the evening 
when the men come back from work and the children 
from school ; the refreshment rooms at the big railway sta- 
tions, full of fruit and coolness, with no smell of alcohol 
in the air and no tang of alcohol in the conversation be- 
tween the customers and the waitresses; the whole at- 
mosphere clean, healthy, and lighthearted, an atmosphere 
of fairly hard work and abundant prosperity. How 
can any foreigner — how dare any foreigner — ask that 
they should change that for the life which we are now 
leading? 

I remember just before starting on that drive hearing 
by telegram that two of my intimate friends were killed, 
and on the ship I heard of two more. At Liverpool I 
remember the curious shabbiness of the streets and 
houses, as if all repainting and decorating were being put 
off until after the war. At Carlisle the mass of tense, 
overworked munition workers; the papers full, as they 



AMERICA AND ENGLAND 181 

are now, of some two-thousand-odd daily casualties. I 
remember the impression then made upon me by the 
slow steps and somewhat haggard faces of ordinary men 
and women in the British streets. No; we cannot ask 
the Americans to stand in our shoes; but I would like 
them to know, and fully realize, that, by Heaven, we 
would not stand in theirs, nor in any others than our 
own! When I realize most fully the burden we are bear- 
ing, the ordeal of fire through which we are resolved to 
pass, I am not only proud of my country, I thank God 
that, if this awful evil was to fall upon humanity, — ■ 
this awful evil to avert another yet more awful, — that 
our country was called upon to stand in the very van of 
battle and of suffering, and that we have not flinched 
from our task. We are the sailors in the ship of human- 
ity, the sailors and the engineers. We may yet be swept 
off the deck; we may be crushed or stifled in the engine- 
room; but at least we are not mere passengers and we 
are not spectators. 

To Western Americans, perhaps to all neutrals, the 
horrors of war so utterly outweigh all the other elements 
that it seems to be nothing but horror. That is, perhaps, 
the sane view, and our own feeling may have a touch of 
the insane about it, but I am sure that it has also a touch 
of the prof ounder truth. A friend and pupil of mine wrote 
to me the other day about the Somme battles, and how 
they had made him feel the difference between soul and 
body; how the body of man seemed a weak and poor 
thing, which he had seen torn to rags all about him and 
trodden into mud, and the soul of man something mag- 
nificent and indomitable, greater than he had ever con- 
ceived. When we talk like that, you neutrals sometimes 
shudder at us and feel as if we were possessed by an evil 



182 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

spirit. No. The spirit may be dangerous, but it is not 
evil. Go about England to-day and you will find in 
every town men and women whose hearts are broken, 
but who are uplifted by a new spiritual strength. They 
know that there are issues greater than life, and that for 
these issues, if it is well to die, it is also well to suffer. 
And there is one mistake, a mere mistake in psychology, 
which I would urge you not to commit. Do not confuse 
war with hatred. The people who feel this spiritual 
exaltation are exactly those whose hearts have not room 
for hatred. The soldiers fighting do not hate as a rule; 
and the people who feel greatly do not hate. It is mostly 
those who are somehow baffled and unable to help, or 
are- brooding over personal wrongs, that give way to ha- 
tred. I remember reading in a New England farmhouse a 
curious document, the will of an old Southerner made in 
1866, in which, since he had lost everything in the Civil 
War, he bequeathed to his children and grandchildren: 
"The bitter hatred and everlasting malignity of my 
heart against all Yankees, meaning by that term all who 
live north of Mason and Dixon's line." What a strange 
ghost of the past that now seems! How the moss has 
grown over those old stones that once were burning 
lava ! And even he was not a soldier of the war, but an 
old man and a non-combatant; otherwise he would not 
have been so bitter. I would like our neutral and pacific 
friends to realize, first, that, as Lord Bryce has said, in 
our normal days we are as peaceful a nation as them- 
selves; and secondly, that now, when war has become 
our duty, the more we feel the cause for which we are 
fighting and are uplifted in spirit by the need of deter- 
mination and of sacrifice, the less room there is in our 
minds for the mean feelings of spite or hate or revenge. 



AMERICA AND ENGLAND 183 

It rests with men themselves to turn this appalling ex- 
perience into spiritual good or evil. There are influences 
enough, God knows, pulling in the evil direction; they 
are published every morning and evening. But the 
Government, the more thoughtful men and the central 
mind of the nation, are, I believe, keeping tenaciously 
to the higher and more permanent ideals. If that is done, 
we may win from this war, as from some great Aris- 
totelian tragedy, a "purification wrought by pity and 
by fear." 



XI 

THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 
{October, 1916) 

An article in the "Atlantic Monthly " for October by- 
Mr. Arthur Bullard has set me thinking. It was hard 
to classify. It was not exactly pro-German. Most of its 
general sentiments were unexceptionable. It did not 
seem to be written in bad faith. Yet it was full of sneers 
and accusations against Great Britain which almost any 
candid reader, who knew the facts, must see to be un- 
fair. I did not know what to make of Mr. Bullard till at 
last there came across my mind an old description of a 
certain type, the second-best type, of legendary Scotch 
minister: "In doctrine not vera ootstanding, but a 
deevil on the moralities !" 

Mr. Bullard's general doctrine is fair enough. There 
have been two types of foreign policy in Great Britain, 
one typified, if you like, by Lord North or Castlereagh 
or Disraeli, a type which concentrated on its country's 
interests and accepted the ordinary diplomatic tradi- 
tions of Old- World Europe; the other typified by Fox, 
Gladstone, Campbell-Bannerman, Bryce, which set be- 
fore itself an ideal of righteousness and even of unself- 
ishness in international politics. Both parties made 
their mistakes ; but on the whole the Liberal movement 
in British foreign policy is generally felt to point in the 
right direction, and its record forms certainly a glorious 
page in the general history of civilization. Mr. Bullard, 



THE SEA POLIGY OF GREAT BRITAIN 185 

speaking as an enlightened American, is prepared to be- 
friend, or at least to praise, Great Britain if she walks in 
Liberal paths, but intends to denounce her if she follows 
after Lord North. For example : he denounces the policy 
of the Boer War, but he praises warmly the settlement 
which followed it in 1906 under the guidance of Camp- 
bell-Bannerman, Asquith, and Sir Edward Grey. " The 
granting of self-government to the defeated Boers will 
always rank as one of the finest achievements in politi- 
cal history.' ' This is all sound Liberalism, and I accept 
every word of it. 

There is nothing peculiar, then, about Mr. Bullard's 
doctrine; it is only when he applies it that one discovers 
his true " deevilishness on the moralities." His method 
is to ask at once more than human nature can be ex- 
pected to give, and then pour out a whole commina- 
tion service of anathemas when his demands are not 
complied with. He begins, as it were, by saying that 
all he expects of Mr. X in order to love him is com- 
mon honesty and truthfulness: we all agree and are edi- 
fied. Then it appears that Mr. X once said he was 

out when he was really at home and busy. The scoun- 
drel! A convicted liar, a man who has used the God- 
given privilege of speech for the darkening of knowl- 
edge! How can Mr. Bullard possibly be friends with 
such a man? 

To take one small but significant point first. Mr. 
Bullard, like most people, sees the need of continuity in 
foreign policy r and the great objections to a system in 
which a new Government, or even a new influence at 
Court, may upset a nation's course. But he does not 
see that such continuity implies some sort of compro- 
mise. A continuous foreign policy in a country gov- 



186 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

erned alternately by Foxites and Northites is possible 
only if both parties abate their extreme pretensions. And 
Mr. Bullard, if I read him aright, expects it to be con- 
tinuous Fox. As a matter of fact, we have had lately 
a continuous foreign policy in Great Britain, because 
Grey, while moving always as best he could towards arbi- 
tration, equity, and a "cordial understanding" with all 
Powers who would agree to it, was felt also to be keenly 
alive to his duties as the steward of a great inheritance. 

But let me begin, as an Englishman, by seeing what 
Mr. Bullard thinks of us. We have apparently started 
by "a wholesale repudiation of legal restraints." We 
have "decided that there is to be no sea law." Con- 
sequently we have "alienated neutral sympathy more 
gradually, but more surely, than the Germans." And 
this alienation, we are led to suppose, is not mainly be- 
cause of any selfish annoyance on the part of neutrals 
whose interests are crossed; it is just their high-minded 
disapproval of wickedness. They are all just as " deevil- 
ish on the moralities" as Mr. Bullard is. Naturally, 
however, they dislike our "brusque denial that nations 
with smaller navies have any voice in defining the law." 
"The Sea-Lords have decided what they would like to 
do, and His Majesty's Privy Council has announced that 
that is the law." In English opinion and action "Might 
makes Right" — this phrase is constantly repeated. 
We are always "hitting below the belt." And lastly 
and most explicitly, "The scrap of paper on which Great 
Britain had promised fair play at sea is torn up!" 

I leave out certain passing accusations of hypocrisy 
and proceed to examine the grounds for this invective. 

"The scrap of paper on which Great Britain had 
promised fair play at sea is torn up." By the "scrap of 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 187 

paper" Mr. Billiard means the Declaration of London; 
and he knows perfectly well that the Declaration of Lon- 
don was never passed into law, never accepted either by 
Great Britain or by any other nation. It is simply un- 
true to say that we promised to observe the Declara- 
tion, or that that document has in any way been violated, 
since it never was law. Mr. Bullard himself gives most 
of the facts; so it is apparently just for fun, or in the joy 
of rhetoric, that he writes such nonsense as this. 

The Declaration of London was an attempt to codify 
and improve the traditional rules of warfare at sea, 
which have always been very fluctuating and uncertain. 
It was due largely to Sir Edward Grey. He summoned 
the chief maritime nations to a conference on the sub- 
ject in December, 1908; the conference sat for less than 
three months, and in February, 1909, made a report 
which was embodied in the Declaration of London. It 
was greatly discussed and eventually rejected in the 
British Parliament. It was not, I believe, even proposed 
anywhere else. As a matter of fact, the Declaration did 
not fully satisfy any one. It was certainly a move in the 
right direction, but there were two large objections to 
it. First, many international lawyers — Professor Hol- 
land was one of them — considered that it had been 
drawn too hastily and was not a satisfactory legal code. 
Secondly, its desirability or undesirability depended 
partly on certain large political problems which were 
obscure in 1909. They are anything but obscure now. 

To take one point only, the one that specially affected 
Great Britain. We were then in the midst of our long 
negotiations with Germany for a reduction of arma- 
ments and a cessation of naval rivalry. The Liberal 
policy was, in general, to conciliate Germany by every 



188 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

possible concession that could be made without fatally 
weakening ourselves or betraying the rest of Europe. 
For example, we deliberately kept our army very small, 
to prove that we intended no aggression. On the other 
hand, we could not give up our naval superiority be- 
cause we are an island power; and, if we were once de- 
feated at sea and blockaded, we could all be starved to 
death or submission in a few weeks. The Germans, on 
the other hand, objected to our naval superiority on a 
number of vague or inadmissible grounds (e.g., that 
"the German eagle was lame of one wing so long as her 
fleet was not as powerful among other fleets as her army 
among other armies"), and on one that had some 
shadow of reason. They objected to having their very 
large mercantile marine at the mercy of Great Britain 
in case of war. Consequently it was worth our while, if 
we could thereby avoid war and secure good relations 
with Germany, both to abandon the right of prize and, 
in general, to cut down the rights of a power command- 
ing the seas in such matters as blockade and contraband. 
(When I say "rights," I mean practices claimed as rights 
by ourselves and others when in command of the sea 
during war, though often disputed or denied by other 
Powers, or by the same Powers in a different situation.) 
That is, we, as the Power commanding the seas, were 
arranging to give up certain traditional advantages for 
the sake of getting a better code of sea law universally 
recognized, and in particular for the sake of insuring the 
good-will of Germany. What happened? In the first 
place, the proposed code turned out to be unsatisfactory 
and was not adopted by any single nation. In the second 
place, instead of responding to our overtures of good-will, 
Germany sprang suddenly at the throat of Belgium and 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 189 

France and drove us into war. And Mr. Bullard coolly 
assumes that we ought to put in practice against our- 
selves, in war, the code which no nation had adopted and 
which had been meant as a concession to avoid war! And 
not only that. I can conceive a sort of visionary, like 
Edward Carpenter, arguing that such an angelic ex- 
ample would have softened the heart of all nations and 
made them hasten — I will not say to help us, but at 
least to write us some most flattering obituary notices. 
But Mr. Bullard takes quite another line. He thinks 
we are thieves and scoundrels and tearers-up of treaties, 
because we did not so penalize ourselves! 

What we did was to announce at the beginning of the 
war, as a guide to other nations, that, though we did 
not, of course, accept it as a code, we should in general 
and with some deductions follow the lines of the Declara- 
tion. This seems to Mr. Bullard worse than nothing: it 
seems to me about the best thing that could be done in 
the circumstances. 

But here Mr. Bullard has a very cunning point to 
make. It has been made also by Professor Liszt. He 
knows and admits that the Declaration was never rati- 
fied and had no legal force. But he points out that, both 
in inviting the other nations to the conference and in rec- 
ommending the Declaration when it had been framed, 
authoritative persons explained that the purpose of the 
whole proceeding was "not to legislate, but to codify." 
" We obtained recognition of the fact/' says Lord Desart, 
"that, as a body, these rules do amount practically to a 
statement of what is the essence of the law of nations." 

Consequently, argues Mr. Bullard, to repudiate the 
Declaration, even if it was never ratified, is to repudiate 
the essence of the law of nations. 



190 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

A clever piece of trick argument. What is the answer 
to it? (1) A very simple point. Mr. Bullard, following 
Professor Liszt, does not give the whole of Lord Desart's 
sentence, but stops in the middle of a phrase, where there 
is not even a comma! The whole phrase is, "amount 
practically to a statement of what is the essence of the 
law of nations properly applicable to the questions at 
issue under present-day conditions of international com- 
merce and warfare." That is, (a) it is admitted that the 
existing rules do not cover the questions at issue under 
present-day conditions; and therefore (b) the conference 
has done its best to apply the essence of the law of 
nations to the solution of these new questions. Lord 
Desart thought the attempt was successful, and that 
the conference really had produced what was "prac- 
tically" a statement of the essence of the old law as ap- 
plied to the new problems. This view was not accepted 
by the British Parliament, nor apparently by any other, 
since they did not ratify the Declaration. 

(2) Codification without alteration is really an im- 
possible achievement. Every person of experience knows 
that you cannot codify a large mass of floating customs 
and divergent laws without, by that very fact, intro- 
ducing changes. I doubt if there has ever been any large 
work of codification accomplished, which was not both 
recommended to its admirers as being a great reform, 
and defended against its opponents on the ground that it 
was a mere registration of existing practice. Every great 
codification creates new law. 

(3) The Declaration is specially recommended by its 
authors as being a compromise. The claims and customs 
of different nations conflict; each one yields here and is 
recompensed there. The best statement perhaps of the 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 191 

work of the conference is contained in the General Re- 
port of its Drafting Committee : — 

"The solutions have been extracted from the various 
views or practices which prevail, and represent what 
may be called the media sententia. They are not always 
in absolute agreement with the views peculiar to each 
country, but they shock the essential ideas of none. They 
must not be examined separately, but as a whole, other- 
wise there is a risk of the most serious misunderstand- 
ings. In fact, if one or more isolated rules are examined, 
either from the belligerent or the neutral point of view, 
the reader may find that the interests with which he is 
especially concerned are jeopardized by the adoption of 
these rules. But they have another side. The work is 
one of compromise and mutual concessions. Is it as a 
whole a good one?" 

Thus, the Declaration is not a mere declaration of the 
existing law of nations. It is a compromise in which dif- 
ferent parties make concessions, in response to other 
concessions which are made to them. And Mr. Bullard 
expects Great Britain, when suddenly involved in war 
with the most terrible enemy known to history, to make 
gratuitously all the concessions contained in the pro- 
posed compromise, and leave it to chance, or to the 
mercy of the Germans, whether she should get any of 
the compensations! And concessions, too, which her 
Parliament had considered excessive in peace time, even 
with the compensations guaranteed! 

What, then, is left if the Declaration of London is not 
accepted? Is there to be no law of the sea at all? What 
is left is exactly all that there was before the sittings of 
that conference, plus a certain extra lucidity in places 
due to its reports. The British courts simply continue 



192 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

to administer international law on the basis of precedent 
adapted to new conditions, exactly as all Powers in the 
world have done. This offends Mr. Bullard, but I find 
it difficult to make out what other course he would rec- 
ommend. 

To establish an international court ad hoc, in the mid- 
dle of the war, and ask it to settle the new questions as 
they arise? To submit all cases to the neutral Powers, 
with all the small European neutrals terrified of offend- 
ing their big military neighbours? Refer all questions to 
the United States alone? Call another conference to 
revise the Declaration of London, and keep all prizes 
waiting till it reported? I doubt if any of these courses 
would please many people. There may be some course 
which would have been better than the normal one, but 
it certainly is not obvious to the ordinary eye. And it 
seems a little hard to denounce the British Government 
as lawless tyrants, justly hated by the world, because 
they do not pursue a better method of settling prize 
cases than any one has yet practised, or perhaps even 
devised. 

So much for general principles; let us now consider 
whether in detailed practice the claims of the British 
Government or the practice of the British courts has 
been particularly reprehensible. The two questions are, 
of course, distinct; and my own impression, given merely 
for what it may be worth, is that the decisions of the 
courts will bear the severest scrutiny, while the claims 
of the Government are closely analogous to the claims 
advanced by all Governments in a similar situation. 
They will compare not unfavorably, for instance, with 
the claims of the United States in the Civil War. It 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 193 

should also be noticed that Great Britain does not act 
alone; and as compared with the precedents laid down 
by various nations in previous wars, a policy agreed 
upon by six of the most important maritime Powers in 
the world has at least a slightly higher claim to validity 
than one laid down by a single Power. Mr. Bullard, in 
one extremely high-principled passage, explains that 
the United States could not in conscience join the Allies 
in this war because that would be fighting in order "to 
make British convenience the rule of the seas." But 
here his moral feelings have evidently intoxicated him. 
It is obvious that, if the United States had cared to 
come in, — which I am not for a moment urging, — the 
law of the seas would, at the very worst, have been inter- 
preted, not for the convenience of Great Britain alone, 
but for the convenience of Great Britain, France, Italy, 
Russia, Portugal, Japan, and the United States. 

But let us consider the particular enormities which 
England is supposed to have committed. And let us be 
clear about the issue. I do not contend that we have 
never stretched in our favour the vague body of unwrit- 
ten rules, based on conflicting precedents and unenforced 
by normal sanctions, which is called international law. 
Every belligerent in every war hitherto has done so; and 
that not always from national selfishness alone. Inter- 
national law, apart from the fundamental misfortune 
of having at present no sanction behind it, suffers from 
two great weaknesses. It is not for the most part framed 
on clear principles, and certainly has not been built up in 
times of peace by "calm thought and discussion"; it has 
mostly been built up by precedents and protests and 
compromises based on immediate pressure. In the sec- 
ond place, the body of precedents is very scanty com- 



194 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

pared with the importance of the interests involved. It 
is not like the English common law, so rich in recorded 
precedents that almost any conceivable new complica- 
tion between litigant interests can be solved by analogy 
with some past judgement. Every new war gives birth 
to new problems and complications which are not cov- 
ered by any precedents in previous wars, and have to 
be settled by very imperfect analogies or by the violent 
stretching of some previous rule. But the present war 
differs from all its predecessors to a quite unusual degree, 
both because of its own vast scale and the new methods 
of warfare it has introduced, and because the whole 
structure of the world has been transformed since the 
last great body of available precedents. What would be 
the condition of private commercial law at the present 
day if it had nothing to go upon but one or two prec- 
edents in 1870, a few more from the time of the Ameri- 
can Civil War, and a good number between 1790 and 
1815? 

Our first great offence is our extension of the doctrine 
of " continuous voyage." This doctrine was first ap- 
plied on a large scale by the Government of the United 
States during the Civil War; it was an extension of pre- 
vious belligerent rights, was discussed by Great Britain 
and other Powers, and finally accepted as legitimate. 
The point is a simple one. By the old rule a belligerent 
has a right to prevent certain ships and cargoes from 
going to the enemy; he has no right to prevent their go- 
ing to a neutral port. But suppose he finds them going 
to a neutral port from which the cargoes are to be taken 
straight on by a protected road to the enemy? What is 
the rule to be? The United States argued that the goods 
were really on a "continuous voyage" or a process of 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 195 

"continuous transportation" to the enemy, and could 
therefore be treated just as if they were going direct to 
the enemy port. This argument was generally accepted 
by publicists, notably by Bluntschli. It was accepted 
by the International Commission which sat in pursu- 
ance to the treaty made at Washington on May 8, 1871 ; 
and it was acted upon in the South African War, when 
stores shipped to Delagoa Bay and clearly intended for 
Pretoria were treated as contraband. 

In the present war the extension became inevitably 
far wider. Germany's own ports are closed; she proceeds 
to import whatever she needs by way of Copenhagen 
or the Dutch ports. We assert the doctrine of "con- 
tinuous voyage" and treat all contraband goods shipped 
for Copenhagen, but obviously intended for German 
use, just as if they were shipped for Hamburg. Let me 
first illustrate this point, and then deal with a difficulty 
that arises. 

The cases of four ships, the Kim, Alfred Nobel, Bjorn- 
stjerne Bjornson, and Friedland, were considered be- 
tween July and September, 1915, when judgement was 
given on all four together. The cargoes had been seized 
and there were numerous claims against the British 
Government for compensation. Some of these were al- 
lowed by the High Court on various grounds, but most 
were rejected. The main facts were as follows: Certain 
exporters, mostly American, sent to Copenhagen enor- 
mous quantities of lard and "fat backs," which were 
in great demand in Germany. They contain glycerine, 
which is the basis of various explosives. There is no 
beast so charged with potential explosive as a fat hog. 
More lard was thus sent to Copenhagen in three weeks 
than had entered the whole of Denmark in the previous 



196 • FAITH, WAR, AND^POLICY 

eight years. There are differences of detail in the various 
transactions, but one company, for instance, consigned 
its goods to an anonymous agent in Copenhagen, who 
had no address beyond a hotel where he happened to be 
staying and who proved to be their permanent represen- 
tative in Hamburg. The company a little later received 
a telegram from this Hamburg agent saying, "Don't 
ship lard Copenhagen, export prohibited " (that is, ex- 
port to Germany was prohibited by the Danish Govern- 
ment). In other cases there were misleading descrip- 
tions of goods and deceptive consignments. There was 
not the remotest possibility of question that the "fat 
backs' ' and lard were in the main meant for German 
explosives. Our High Court gave the benefit of the doubt 
to those claimants whose case seemed really doubtful. 

So far can any one blame us? Can any reasonable 
person argue that Germany ought, by international law, 
to be free to import all the explosives she likes, under 
the nose of the Allied fleets, by simply making them 
land at Copenhagen instead of at Hamburg? 

But now difficulties begin. I will not spend time on 
the curious argument that " continuous voyage," though 
it applies to absolute contraband, should not apply to 
conditional contraband. A compromise on these lines 
had been proposed in the Declaration of London, but is 
obviously illogical. Neither will I discuss the point, 
dear to technical lawyers, that the doctrine of " contin- 
uous voyage," though sound for contraband, perhaps 
does not apply to blockade, on the ground that the cargo 
may continue its journey by land and a blockade by 
land is not a blockade, but a siege. Such an objection, 
U correct, can hardly be said to "apply the essence of 
international law to present-day questions." 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 197 

The real difficulties of the situation lay in sifting the 
goods intended for Germany from the bona-fide imports 
of Denmark and the other border countries. Denmark, 
Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, all had their 
normal needs. They used butter and dynamite and rub- 
ber and copper and lard and "fat backs" themselves, 
and we had no right, and certainly no wish, to interfere 
with them. What were we to do? Were we to examine 
every ship and sift the whole of her cargo? That would 
involve immense labour, infinite waste of time, and the 
certainty of many mistakes. We discussed with the vari- 
ous parties concerned all kinds of arrangements by which 
our legitimate suppression of supplies to the enemy 
might be carried out with the minimum of inconvenience 
to neutrals. The exact arrangements vary in different 
countries and none can be entirely without friction, 
though, of course, our natural object is to reduce friction 
to a minimum. I only wish I could make Mr. Bullard 
realize the enormous amount of work and ingenuity 
which our officials devote to the task of preventing 
incidental injustices and appeasing injured suscepti- 
bilities. 

The main methods are twofold: (1) We invite those 
merchants and corporations in neutral countries who 
are importing goods bona fide for their own country's 
consumption, and not for reexport to our enemies, to 
sign an agreement to that effect. In most countries 
there is a large union or trust which has collectively 
made such an undertaking, and which endeavours to 
prevent breaches of the agreement by its members. 
(2) We try to ascertain the bona-fide imports of each 
country by taking the average imports of some ten 
previous years, and allowing some extra amount — 



198 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

imrying in different cases — to replace such imports 
from enemy countries as may have disappeared. If 
these averages are greatly exceeded, — and they some- 
times have multiplied themselves by ten or twelve, **- 
we become suspicious, make further searches, and gen- 
erally find some enterprising smugglers who have broken 
their undertaking to us and are consequently added to a 
black list. They are people who prefer to supply the 
enemy; and we do not willingly, in war time, allow peo- 
ple to supply the enemy, any more than the enemy, 
when he can help it, allows them to supply us. 

These two methods applied in conjunction are the 
best instruments that we have discovered for carrying 
out without undue friction our necessary, although 
somewhat oppressive, task. The war does impose on 
neutrals a considerable amount of hardship; there is 
no use denying it. And the enormous opportunities for 
money-making which it also affords to a good number 
of traders in each country are only a poor excuse for the 
general inconvenience. Still, I doubt if much improve- 
ment is reasonably possible upon these measures which 
"Great Britain in concert with all her Allies " has taken 
to prevent trading with the enemy through our lines, so 
long as neutral States meet us in a neutral and con- 
ciliatory spirit. When they do not, of course there is 
trouble. The absolute refusal of the Swedish Govern- 
ment to sanction any agreement for the purpose of de- 
termining what imports were going to the enemy and 
what not, has led to much friction and mutual reprisals. 
And similarly in Greece, the perpetual series of frauds 
and secret hostilities which have followed the King's 
unconstitutional dismissal of Venizelos, his trick upon 
us at Salonica, and his breach of treaty with our ally 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 199 

Serbia, have produced a policy of pressure on the part of 
the Allies, which can be justified only as preferable to 
actual war. For there is no doubt that from the original 
breach of treaty onward the Greek Government has 
provided us with abundant casus belli. But these painful 
controversies are not the result of our trade policy: they 
are incidents of natural friction with Germanizing courts 
or governments. But Mr. Bullard is for some strange 
reason speechless with horror over the first of our in- 
struments. It seems to him a "humiliating surrender of 
sovereignty" that the Dutch Government should sanc- 
tion the existence of the Overseas Trust, which under- 
takes, so far as overseas imports are concerned, to trade 
only with one side in the war. I cannot see where 
" sovereignty " comes in. It is a purely business arrange- 
ment, by which certain firms who want for themselves 
goods passing through the hands of one belligerent, 
undertake, if they receive the goods, not to hand them 
on to the other. i/ 

I pass to a real difficulty, where I do not feel at all sure 
that our policy was wise, though on the whole the bal- 
ance of well-informed opinion seems to approve of it. 
I mean the so-called total "blockade" of Germany, in- 
cluding the shutting-out of foodstuffs. The history of 
this policy is as follows: — 

On February 4, 1915, the Germans announced that 
all the seas round Great Britain were a "war area" in 
which they would sink without warning all ships what- 
soever. (Neutrals might be spared on occasion, but could 
not complain if they were sunk.) This was a proposed 
blockade by submarine, which has hitherto proved to be 
impracticable. If Germany had commanded the seas 



200 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

she would, of course, have proclaimed a real blockade 
and prevented any ship from reaching Great Britain. 

Now, we made no objection to the enemy's wishing 
to blockade us. We objected to the submarine blockade 
on its own special demerits, because it could not be, or 
at any rate was not, carried out with any respect for 
humanity. A regular blockade may be compared with 
putting a line of policemen across a street to turn back 
intruders. The submarine blockade was as though a 
man, having no police at his disposal, were to make oc- 
casional dashes into the street with a revolver and shoot 
passers-by. But this point need not be laboured, since 
American opinion was quite in agreement with ours. 
The point to consider is the retort that we made. 

Up to February we had allowed, not only foodstuffs, 
but important articles for munition-making, like cotton, 
to proceed freely to Germany. On February 4 Germany 
announced that no ship would be allowed to sail to or 
from Great Britain, and that all our shipping, including 
even fishing-boats, would be sunk at sea by submarines. 
We replied on March 11 that, if they chose to put the 
war on that footing, we took up the challenge. After a 
certain date we would allow no ship to carry goods to or 
from Germany, and, as for their murderous submarines, 
our fishermen should have arms and fight them. The 
submarine war has been at times extremely dangerous 
to us, and may be so again; but, so far as we can at pres- 
ent judge, we have won it. By unheard-of efforts of dar- 
ing and invention our seafaring men have baffled and 
destroyed the submarines, and we have turned the tables 
of the blockade completely against the enemy. 

Our action, however, has been criticized on several 
grounds. (1) On grounds of international law. Here I 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 201 

must stand aside and leave the lawyers to speak. It is 
no part of my case to argue that in all the innumerable 
controversies produced by the war England has always 
been technically in the right. But it seems pretty clear 
that in this matter a condition has arisen which has no 
precedent in previous wars and is not covered by any of 
the existing rules. If our action is to be described as a 
" blockade," there has certainly never been any blockade 
like it before, either in vastness of scale or, I think, in 
efficiency, or in the leniency with which it is exercised. 
Neither has any Government of a belligerent nation be- 
fore commandeered all foodstuffs for its own use, as Ger- 
many has, and thus brought them under the category of 
contraband. Nor again, so far as I know, has there been 
a parallel to the curious position in the Baltic, where our 
command of the sea suddenly ceases, not from any lack 
of strength or vigilance on our part, but because the neu- 
tral Powers who own the narrow entrances to the Baltic 
have closed them to our warships. We seem here again 
to be creating a precedent, but not, I think, a precedent 
that is repugnant to the "essence of international law 
properly applicable to questions at issue under present- 
day conditions." Mr. Asquith seems to have accepted 
some such view when he explained that our policy was 
to exclude supplies from Germany, and at the same time 
refused to use the term " blockade" in order "not to be 
entangled in legal subtleties." The gravest objection to 
the whole policy is, no doubt, the hardship which it in- 
flicts on neutrals. All blockading, all stopping of contra- 
band, all interference with shipping, inflicts hardship on 
neutrals; and the immense scale of the Allied operations 
in this world-war makes the total hardship inflicted very 
large. 



202 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

I sometimes doubt whether the Allies would have 
taken this drastic step had they not felt that, on the 
main issue of the war, neutral feeling was so overwhelm- 
ingly on our side that it would probably accept a good 
deal of inconvenience in order to have the war finished 
more rapidly and successfully. And I do think that the 
general attitude of most neutral nations, and most es- 
pecially of America, has shown a high standard of gen- 
erosity and of what I may call "world-patriotism." 

(2) Secondly, on grounds of humanity. We are said 
to be "starving the women and children of Germany." 
The answer is, first, that such a blockade is a normal 
measure of war in all sieges and was practised, for ex- 
ample, by the Germans in the siege of Paris. It has al- 
ways been understood that the siege process would be 
applied to Great Britain by any enemy who should com- 
mand the sea. It was attempted by Napoleon, and it has 
been applied already by Germany, though with com- 
plete lack of success. We are doing to Germany what 
they are trying to do to us. Secondly, while we are a na- 
tion vitally dependent on sea-borne imports for our 
food, Germany, is almost completely self-supporting. 
She can live for an indefinite time on her own produce; 
and the most that our " blockade " can do is to make life 
less comfortable and the supplying of the army vastly 
more difficult. No human being in Germany need starve 
because of our "blockade." 

There is a further development of this argument which 
causes many people, myself included, grave searchings 
of heart. It is connected with the treatment of conquered 
territories, such as Poland, Serbia, and, to a lesser degree, 
Belgium. By every canon of law and humanity, as well 
as by the express stipulations of the Hague Convention, 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 203 

& nation which holds conquered territory assumes seripus 
responsibilities towards the inhabitants. All these the 
German Government has repudiated. It appears certain 
that the German Government has not only destroyed 
during its military operations practically all the food- 
supplies of Serbia, and much of the food-supplies of 
Poland: it has further, during its occupation of those 
territories, carried off into Germany, with or without 
pretext, almost all the food that remained in them. It 
has produced famine of a ghastly description, and ex- 
cused itself by attributing all to the British blockade. 

This is bad enough, but worse remains. Appeals were 
made to us to do for Poland and Serbia what we did for 
Belgium: to admit food for the starving natives and, of 
course, also contribute to the food-fund ourselves. This 
we were willing and anxious to do if we had the same 
guarantee as in Belgium, that the Germans would not 
take the food, native or imported, for their own use. 
They were not to take the imported food themselves; 
nor were they to sweep the country bare of all the na- 
tive-grown crops and cattle, and leave us to support 
entirely the whole population of their conquered prov- 
inces. To the surprise of most people concerned, they 
refused to give this guarantee. By starving these terri- 
tories, it appeared, they gained two advantages. First, 
they forced large numbers of Poles, and perhaps a few 
Serbs, to seek work in Germany and set free so many 
Germans for the fighting line. Secondly, they could use 
the famine to stir up hatred against the British. Mr. 
Bullard assures us that even in America the starvation 
of Poland is generally attributed to our blockade, and if 
writers of his tone have much influence I have no doubt 
that what he says is true. As for the unfortunate Poles 



204 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

themselves in their misery and isolation, who can tell 
what they believe? 

This is a hideous state of things, and if our blockade 
is at all an effective element in causing it, I would be in 
favour of dropping the blockade forthwith. But it does 
not seem to be so. If Germany did not wish to starve 
these people she need not do it. We are willing, both to 
admit food and to send food, so long as she will promise 
not to steal it. If it be argued that Germany cannot be 
expected to look on at a crowd of conquered Poles and 
Serbs enjoying themselves while good sound Germans 
are short of pork and butter and bread, the answer is 
that, even at the best, we should hardly be able to bring 
the food-supply of two utterly ravaged and devitalized 
countries, like Poland and Serbia, to a level approaching 
that of Germany. Germany is living on her own re- 
sources and those of her allies, true; but the territories 
in question are both vast and fertile, and scarcely the 
extreme fringe of them has been touched by the war. 
On the whole, it does not look as if Poland or Serbia 
would appreciably benefit by our admission of food to 
Germany. 

The extension of the doctrine of " continuous voyage," 
and the prevention of all sea-borne trade to or from Ger- 
many: those are the two main problems. The remainder 
are smaller things, although in many ways interestiog 
and important. In all of them, I think, the central fact 
is that we have extended some existing doctrine of inter- 
national law to meet the special situations produced by 
this war. I do not say that in all cases we have decided 
rightly. Sir Edward Grey has definitely offered to sub- 
mit to a convention after the war the whole question of 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 205 

what is called "The Freedom of the Seas," and f such a 
convention will probably settle some of these points in 
our favour and some against us. At present there is no 
convention either existing or possible. There is no fixed 
code of the sea and never has been. We have to use our 
own tribunals, which administer international law to the 
best of their ability according to precedent. They have 
on certain occasions decided that our Government has 
done wrong and can be compelled to pay damages; they 
have decided that certain Orders in Council were against 
international law and have disallowed them. They have, 
I may note in passing, declined to admit the plea of the 
Crown that it was following an American precedent 
which was afterwards embodied in an act of the United 
States Congress, on the ground that the said precedent 
and act were too oppressive. The United States claimed 
that the Government could requisition any goods or 
ships which had been captured by their fleet, without 
previous trial. 1 When the convention comes to sit on 
these questions which we have tried to settle, they will 
probably, as I said before, decide some for and some 
against us; but I am confident that they will not find 
that our courts have acted with either levity or rapacity. 
I mention summarily the chief remaining points. We 
treat "bunker coal of enemy origin' 7 as contraband; and 
Mr. Bullard considers this as absolutely the very worst 
thing we have done. He quotes ancient precedents to 
show that "things needful for the working of the ship or 
comfort of the crew " are not to be treated as contraband. 
But the rulings in question all date from before the time 
of steam and refer to sailing ships. Coal is admittedly in 

* ' Judicial Committee of Privy Council, in the Zamora case, 
April 7, 1916. 



206 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

a special position, and international law has not yet 
pronounced upon it. 

Thus far, then, our "very worst" offence is not so 
serious. But perhaps it is our motive that is so infamous? 
Our motive is simple. As explained above, we do not 
allow traders to carry through our lines goods intended 
for the enemy, and we ask all traders for an assurance 
that they are not doing so. If they refuse to give this 
assurance, and if further we find them buying enemy 
coal, we treat them as if they had been buying any other 
enemy goods. What does the enemy do to ships from 
England or Russia in the Baltic? And do we ever think 
of complaining? 

We examine neutral mails. This seems a bad case. We 
have actually a rule of the Hague Convention against us, 
just as all the belligerents have — or have only just 
missed having — in the matter of aeroplanes. The Con- 
vention maintains the inviolability of all mail-bags, and 
used to forbid all dropping of explosives from the air. 
Yet I feel some confidence that any future conference 
will recognize that both those rules are " unemployable," 
and will justify our action about the mails. The old 
precedents do not apply at all. There has never been in 
any previous war anything approaching the present net- 
work of commercial and political correspondence across 
the Atlantic. Suppose in the Civil War there had been 
large settlements of Confederates in Mexico and in 
Canada, who were engaged in plots against the United 
States? Is it to be believed that President Lincoln 
would have refrained from opening the captured mail- 
bags passing between Canada and Mexico? A German 
in Denmark or Sweden arranges for an Indian in San 
Francisco to come to England with a false American 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 207 

passport in order to murder Sir Edward Grey: is he to 
have the right of sending and receiving letters, unhin- 
dered under the eyes of the British fleet ? Plots about 
contraband are, of course, much commoner. Are we to 
be allowed to search ships for nickel and rubber, but for- 
bidden to interfere with these plotters' mail-bags? The 
rules and the precedents of other wars are here against 
us, but I must say that such a complete change in condi- 
tions seems absolutely to demand a change of rules. 

" The closing the Suez Canal to neutrals is a measure for 
which no military necessity has been shown" Mr. Bullard 
does not seem to question its legality, and I have not 
tried to find out exactly what the rights of either Egypt 
or Great Britain or the Suez Canal shareholders may be. 
But as for the military necessity, surely a child can see it. 
To block the Canal would be worth some millions of dol- 
. lars to the enemy. A much smaller sum would suffice to 
induce a dozen Greek, or Swedish, or even unprejudiced 
Dutch, skippers to play certain tricks which I need not 
name, but which might make the Canal unusable for 
several weeks. 

Mr. Bullard ends with a number of vaguely prejudi- 
cial statements, largely in the form of innuendo or paren- 
thesis. He seems really unable to understand the condi- 
tions produced by war. He says we regard it as "moral 
for neutrals to help England but a deadly sin to trade 
with Germany." Of course it has nothing to do with sin. 
We do not fire at German men-of-war because we think 
them immoral, but because they are our enemies. We 
do not confiscate cargoes of rubber consigned to Ger- 
many because it is essentially immoral for Germans to 
use rubber. We only say to every neutral trader, "If 
you trade with Germany, we will not trade with you." 



208 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

Or rather that is the extreme limit of what we say. The 
opposite conduct was once considered possible, but seems 
to us of the present generation a little dishonourable. It 
makes us a little ashamed when we learn that Napoleon's 
armies were often clad in cloth from Yorkshire and boots 
made in Northampton. The view of the British Gov- 
ernment at that time was that it was good business to 
make money by supplying the enemy and use the pro- 
ceeds for defeating him. It is a possible view, and ap- 
parently is the view that appeals to Mr. Bullard. And 
doubtless it would enable both ourselves and certain 
neutrals to make more money. But — well, we do not 
like it, and do not believe that in the end it pays. 

And then the article tails off into vague horrors 
about the British censorship and the Defence of the 
Realm Act and the deplorable profits made by British 
shippers, and the " party of Lord North which is installed 
at the Foreign Office' ' ! 

Everybody knows that in war censorship is neces- 
sary; every nation employs it, Great Britain rather more 
leniently than the rest. It is a pure myth to suppose that 
in England we are kept in the dark about important 
sides of the war which are well known to neutrals. I have 
been in four different neutral countries since the war 
began, and have read their newspapers; so I speak with 
confidence. But it is just the sort of myth that Mr. Bul- 
lard accepts without question. As to the Defence of the 
Realm Act: of course the act gives the Executive tremen- 
dous powers and would, if continued in normal times, be 
incompatible with civil liberty. But everybody knows 
that some such special laws are necessary in war time; 
there is no nation in Europe which attempts to do with- 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 209 

out such laws, and Mr. Bullard makes no attempt to 
show that any other nation applies them more leniently 
than England does. As to the fortunes made by ship- 
pers, why drag in the word "British"? With the Ger- 
man merchant ships out of use, with Allied and neutral 
ships sunk to the number of some hundreds by sub- 
marines and extensively commandeered by the various 
Governments for war purposes, there is an extreme 
shortage of ships together with an immense demand. 
Every tub that will float, of whatever nationality, is 
bringing its owner fortune. And we dare not discourage 
them, for we want every ship we can get. Mr. Bullard, 
dropping for a moment his lofty idealism, complains 
simply that the British are getting too large a share of 
the swag, an unproved and to me extremely doubtful 
statement. Naturally ships belonging to the Allied 
Powers are less open to suspicion than neutrals are, and 
consequently are less harassed by certain restrictions. 
But the British, at any rate, are not only subjected to 
enormous war-taxation, but have in addition fifty per 
cent of their war-profits confiscated. And Lord North 
at the Foreign Office! Really one smiles at Mr. Bul- 
lard's innocence. ' ' The visitor thought we were naughty, 
papa; but of course he has never seen us when we are 
really naughty ! " In every country engaged in war there 
is somewhere below the surface a growling mass of pas- 
sion, brutality, lawlessness, hatred of foreign nations, 
contempt for reason and humanity. In Great Britain, 
thank Heaven, the brute is kept cowed and well chained, 
though at times his voice is heard in the more violent 
newspapers. The brute knows the hands that hold him 
down and hates almost all the present Cabinet, but 
most of all, perhaps, he hates two men: the great and 



210 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

moderate Liberal who presides over the Government, 
the great and moderate Liberal who guides the Foreign 
Office. — And Mr. Bullard, in his innocence, would like 
to turn them out! 

It is all rather pitiable. Nothing verified, nothing 
exact, nothing impartially stated, not much that is even 
approximately true. Mr. Bullard seems to mean well; I 
have no doubt that he means well. But his present tone 
will not serve the ends of Liberalism. It will only serve 
to foster prejudice, to make bad blood, to stir up that 
evil old spirit of slander between nations, which every 
decent Liberal and certainly every good internationalist 
would like to see buried forever. 

It is false to say that Great Britain has broken the 
Declaration of London, because that Declaration was 
never accepted as law. It is false to say that Great Brit- 
ain is alone responsible for every unpopular act com- 
mitted at sea by the Allied navies; she is acting in con- 
cert with nearly all the great maritime Powers of the 
world. It is idle to complain that Great Britain adminis- 
ters international law by means of her own courts; that 
is the only method ever followed by other belligerent na- 
tions, the United States included, nor has any better 
practical method, so far as I know, been even proposed 
to her. And lastly, I believe it is profoundly false to say 
that the British courts have acted in heat and passion 
or at all fallen below the level of scrupulous care which 
is expected from the best judicial bodies in the world. 

It is not likely that their decisions are in every case 
exactly right. It is to be hoped that after the war, if we 
can get some fair security of future peace and establish 
some permanent and effective international tribunal, we 
may reach a definite code of international law which all 



THE SEA POLICY OF GREAT BRITAIN 211 

nations can agree to uphold. Whatever meaning there 
is in the catch phrase "Freedom of the Seas" will then 
come up for serious discussion, and Sir Edward Grey has 
officially announced our willingness to take part in such 
discussion. In the mean time the great group of Powers 
which is, as Mr. Bullard admits, on the whole fighting for 
the maintenance of public right and for honesty be- 
tween nations, cannot be expected, in the midst of its 
mortal struggle, to divest itself of its normal sources of 
strength, to satisfy an ideal which has never been de- 
manded of other belligerents. 

There is another tale, by the way, about that minister 
who was such "a deevil on the moralities." He once 
found a respectable citizen being attacked by two thieves. 
He first thought of helping the citizen, but eventually 
put his stick between the man's legs and tripped him up. 
"The man was never a good churchgoer," he explained, 
"and his language at the time was a most sinful ex- 
ample." The analogy to Mr. Bullard is closer than I 
thought. But I am certain that he does not speak for his 
countrymen. 



XII 

OXFORD AND THE WAR' 

A Memoir op Arthur George Heath, Fellow op 
New College, and Lieutenant in the Sixth 
Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment 
(September, 1916) 

There are perhaps no institutions in England whose 
response to the requirements of the war has been more 
swift, or whose sacrifice more intense and enduring, than 
the two ancient universities. Not, indeed, that it is very- 
profitable to measure the comparative sacrifices of those 
who give their all. If these two mothers gave without 
hesitation, so, of course, did many others. But these two 
had, in the nature of things, a gift to offer which strikes 
the onlooker as richer than most, more brilliant, more 
pathetic, more inevitably suggesting the idea, by all 
worldly standards, of incalculable and heroic waste. 

Men of many kinds and many different natures have 
gone out of Oxford, to return thither only as a memory 
and an inscribed stone. But perhaps the two classes that 
have most touched the imagination are those who stand, 
from the academic point of view, at the extremities of 
the scale. 

On one side the more or less idle and wealthy men to 
whom the university had been something nearer to an 
athletic or social club than a place of study, and whosev 
lives had often seemed to be little more than an expres- 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 213 

sion of irresponsible youth, if not a mere selfish pursuit 
of pleasure. 

It was a surprise to many of us to see how, when the 
need came, there was found in these men an unsuspected 
strenuousness and gravity. The power, it would seem, 
had always been there; but to call it forth needed a 
stronger stimulus than the ordinary motives of well-to- 
do English life. And many an Oxford teacher must have 
begun to revise his general estimate of human nature 
when he heard the later history of various undergrad- 
uates over whom he had hitherto shrugged despairing 
shoulders ; what hardships they faced without a murmur, 
what care they took of their men's health and comfort, 
how they had shown themselves capable, not only of 
dying gallantly, but of shouldering grave and incessant 
responsibilities without a lapse. 

s And at the other end of the scale were men almost the 
opposite in character: students selected from all the 
schools of the kingdom for their intellectual powers, men 
whose ideals of life were gentle, to whom Oxford was 
above all things a place of study and meditation, where 
they could live again through the great thoughts of past 
generations and draw from them light for the under- 
standing of truth or help for the bettering of human life 
in the future. 

These men, unlike the first, were accustomed normally 
to live for their duty, and their duty hitherto had lain 
along quiet and rather austere paths. It had led them 
towards industry and idealism and the things of the in- 
tellect; also, no doubt, towards the ordinary habits of 
manliness and good temper which make life in a com- 
munity pleasant. Those of them especially who had 
joined the tutorial staff of some college had it as a large 



214 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

part of their daily business to think for others, to practise 
constant sympathy and understanding, to be the friend of 
every pupil who came to them, and to have no enemies. 
And on these men there fell suddenly a new duty; the 
same as the old, perhaps, in its ultimate justification, 
but certainly in its concrete expression the most violent 
opposite of all they had hitherto thought right. They 
were called abruptly to a life in which their old attain- 
ments and virtues, as it seemed, were not wanted, their 
standard of manners somewhat out of place, their gen- 
tleness and modesty almost a positive disqualification; 
while activities were suddenly demanded of them which 
they had never practised and which, for all any one knew, 
might be entirely foreign to their natures. And here, 
too, there came to the onlooker a somewhat awed sur- 
prise, to see how the same inward power which had 
shaped these men's previous lives was ready for its new 
task. They adapted themselves. They found how to use 
their brains in a field that was strange to them. They 
learnt to command instead of persuading or suggesting, 
but still turned their experience in handling pupils and 
classes to advantage for the leading and shaping of their 
platoons. They proved themselves able to endure fa- 
tigues and dangers outside all the range of their previ- 
ous imagination, and even, what must to many have 
been a more profoundly hateful task, to study carefully 
how to inflict the maximum of injury upon the men in 
the trenches opposite. They would never in normal life 
have been soldiers, yet they brought some great gifts to 
their soldiering. After all, there are very few fields of life 
where a keen intelligence is not apt to be useful, or where 
habits of duty and sympathy and understanding are not 
very valuable things. 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 215 

It was to this class that Arthur Heath most typically 
belonged; and in trying to write of him one feels how 
much easier it would be to describe a man of the other 
type. The other type makes such an obvious picture ; 
the young man who "cuts" his lectures and is misun- 
derstood by his dons, who neglects his mere books be- 
cause his heart is in romance or adventure or thoughts 
of war ; the man of dominant will and stormy passions, or 
of reckless daring and happy-go-lucky lawlessness, who 
is always in trouble till he rises to the call of need and 
becomes a hero. The Idle Apprentice always forms a 
better picture than the Industrious Apprentice, and his 
life is more interesting to read. 

To make a man's story clear one needs achievements, 
and to describe him vividly one seems to need some 
characteristic weaknesses. But the men of whom I write 
were very young, and had lived so far a life with little 
external achievement, only the achievements of high 
thinking and feeling, of quiet tasks well done and gen- 
erous duties well carried through : a life with plenty in it 
to command admiration and love, but nothing to make 
a story about. And as for characteristic weaknesses, I 
suppose these men had them, being human; but I should 
find it hard to name Arthur Heath's weaknesses, and they 
were certainly not picturesque enough to be remem- 
bered. One remembers these men by slight things; by a 
smile, a look of the eyes, a way of sitting or walking; 
by a sudden feeling about some chance incident — "I 
should like to talk that over with Heath," or, "How 
Heath would have laughed at that!" But such things 
can hardly be communicated, any more than the sense 
of loss or loneliness can. One can only say: these young 
men were beautiful spirits and of high promise; they 



216 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

lived a sheltered though strenuous life, partly devoted to 
high intellectual studies and ideal interests, partly to that 
borderland of social work in which hard thinking and 
brotherly love go hand in hand; then, when the call came, 
they stepped instantly out into a world of noise and 
mire, worked and laughed and suffered with their fel- 
low men, and, like them, died for their country. 

A slight story in any case, and in Arthur Heath's per- 
haps slighter than in most. The mere annals of his life 
have comparatively little interest. As is said by one who 
knew him especially well, they are summed up in the 
phrase, "Like boy, like man." It is a singularly uni- 
form story of quiet industry and strength, a very gen- 
tle, affectionate, and modest nature, extraordinary 
powers of intellect and a rather individual but irrepres- 
sible sense of humour. 

He was born in London on October 8, 1887, and was 
educated at the Grocers' Company's School, of which he 
always spoke very highly, and which certainly seems to 
have had the power of turning out thoughtful men. He 
rose through the various forms with surprising rapidity, 
excelling at almost everything he touched. He was very 
good at such sports as running, swimming, and shooting; 
he delighted in natural scenery and country walks, and 
he showed an especial gift for music. In December, 
1904, he obtained an Open Classical Scholarship at New 
College, Oxford, and came into residence in October of 
the next year. It so happened that I had just returned 
to Oxford and New College myself that term, after an 
absence of sixteen years, and was told, I remember, that 
I should have two particularly good pupils to teach — 
the senior Winchester Scholar, Leslie Hunter, and the 
Open Scholar, Heath, from some London school. They 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 217 

both abundantly justified the description. They ran 
each other close for the great university distinctions, re- 
mained friends and colleagues, and died not very far 
apart on the Western front. 

I remember finding Heath waiting in my study, a 
slender, delicately made freshman, very young-looking, 
dark, with regular features and great luminous eyes; 
rather silent and entirely gentle and unassuming. A 
freshman from a London school is apt to be a little "out 
of it " at first; he is surrounded by boys from Winchester, 
Eton, Rugby, and the other great public schools, who 
have old schoolfellows by the score scattered about the 
university, and whose ordinary habits and manners, 
virtues and weaknesses, form the average standard of 
the place. Heath's gentleness immediately inclined 
most people to like him, while his brains obviously com- 
manded respect; but he was always reserved and did not 
quickly become well known in college. He struck one in 
his first terms as living an intense inner life of watching 
and thinking, observing and weighing, and making up 
his mind quietly on a multitude of subjects, while quite 
refusing to be bullied or hurried. He had not had as much 
training in Greek and Latin composition as the best boys 
from the great schools, a fact which just prevented him 
from getting the two blue-ribbons of scholarship, the 
Hertford and Ireland. But he came second for both, and 
obtained a Craven Scholarship in 1906 and a First Class 
in Moderations in 1907 and in Greats in 1909, after which 
he was immediately elected a Fellow of New College. 

Before settling down to his teaching work he travelled 
for a year in France and Germany, attending the Uni- 
versities of Paris and Berlin, and visiting Leipzig, 
Munich, Heidelberg, and other places. His chief in- 



218 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

terests at this time, apart from music, were philosophy 
and social reform. He had expected much from the 
French Socialists and the German philosophers, and his 
letters to me seem to show that both expectations were 
disappointed. His accounts of the struggles of advanced 
French politicians are more amusing than respectful, 
and he could not find the relief and edification that Jean 
Christophe found in the religious enthusiasm of the 
votaries of violence. On the other hand, he conceived 
both respect and warm affection for individual French- 
men ; he was keenly interested in the theatres, and greatly 
admired the work of certain French philosophers. In 
Germany his experience was similar to that of so many 
English students. He was disappointed in the teaching 
of the universities, though he rather admired the actual 
lecturing. He was quite surprised at what seemed to 
him the decadence of German philosophy. He thought 
that its highly professional and technical character led 
its professors to multiply systems and interest them- 
selves in system-building rather than to look freshly at 
the facts they had to study; and that quite often some 
criticism of indurated error which had come to be a 
commonplace in Oxford was unsuspected or hailed as a 
new discovery in the German schools. He was amused, 
too, and somewhat bored at the self-conscious insistence 
on German Kultur, with which his ears were inun- 
dated; the word was still unfamiliar to most English- 
men at that time. And he wrote me a serious and per- 
turbed warning, as to a fellow friend of peace, about the 
anger against England and the inclination towards war 
which he found widespread in Germany. Neither he 
nor I, he considered, had at all realized the strength of 
these feelings. On the other hand, he was favourably 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 219 

impressed by the strength and discipline of the German 
Socialists, especially in the south, and the general rea- 
sonableness of their political action. He had always 
loved German music, and he revelled in the mediaeval 
towns and the vestiges of the simple life of old Germany. 

When he returned to Oxford, he took up his regular 
work as a Greats tutor, lecturing mostly on modern 
philosophy, especially on various branches of political 
speculation. He took, on the one hand, such subjects as 
"Sensation, Imagery, and Thought " and "The Psy- 
chological Account of Knowledge"; and, on the other, 
"Laissez Faire," "Modern Socialism," "Socialist Criti- 
cisms and Socialist Remedies." During these four years 
he was building up a great position of quiet influence as 
a tutor. Good pupils are apt to repay richly whatever 
effort a tutor spends upon them, but I have seldom 
heard such warm language of friendship and admira- 
tion as from certain of Heath's pupils when they talked 
about him. 

It is curious to notice that, at this time, when his 
work was so strikingly successful and his ship had been 
happily brought to port, he began, for the first time in 
my knowledge of him, to be uneasy and discontented. It 
is a phenomenon often visible in the best of the young 
tutors at Oxford, and is connected with the very quality 
which makes them inspiring as teachers. It is not that 
they do not enjoy their work and their pupils. They do 
both. But their interests overflow the bounds of their 
activities. They pine for a field of work with more life in 
it, a wider outlook and more prospect of effectiveness, 
a horizon less limited by examinations and routine and 
the constant training of undeveloped minds. Still more, 
perhaps, it is the moral trouble that besets all purely 



220 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

intellectual workers, the difficulty of maintaining faith 
in the value of your own work. Even if Heath had been 
able to know what his pupils and colleagues thought of 
him and said of him among themselves, he would prob- 
ably have suspected that they were merely exaggerating. 
But of course, as a rule, men do not hear these things. 
Friends cannot openly pay one another compliments. 

To Heath, so far as he discussed the matter with me, 
no definite alternative really presented itself. His life 
was very varied in its interests. Besides his personal 
studies and the work with his pupils, he derived intense 
pleasure from his piano, and took an active part in the 
musical life at Oxford. He would often go out to one of 
the Oxfordshire villages and play classical music to the 
village people. He was also, during his last two years 
of residence, one of the university members on the 
Board of Guardians, where his care and good judgement 
were greatly valued, and the contact with practical life 
and concrete economic problems opened to him a new 
vista of interest. He refused to stand for a certain pro- 
vincial professorship, which would have given him a 
larger income and more leisure, coupled with less con- 
genial work and less advanced pupils. At one time he 
hankered after the profession of medicine, the one form 
of intellectual work whose utility is as plain as a pike- 
staff. Sometimes, again, he rebelled at the idea of al- 
ways teaching men who had such abundance of good 
teaching already, and wished to devote himself entirely 
tothe"W.E.A." 

This society, whose initials stand for "Workers' Edu- 
cational Association," has exercised a great fascination 
over the best minds of Oxford for the last ten years or 
so. Wherever a class of working-men chose to gather 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 221 

together and ask for a trained university graduate to 
teach them and to read and discuss their essays, the 
organization tried to provide an Oxford or Cambridge 
man, and as a matter of fact usually managed to send 
one of the best and most invigorating of the younger 
teachers in the place. Most of the classes were conducted 
in the town where the working-men happened to live, 
but arrangements were also made by which picked men 
came to Oxford. The success of the movement, from an 
educational point of view, has been nothing less than 
extraordinary; and, considering the miserable pay and 
the discomforts of the teacher's life, the devotion with 
which dozens of brilliant young men have thrown them- 
selves into the tutorial work has been a credit to human 
nature. 

One of Heath's W.E. A. pupils, a member of the Amal- 
gamated Society of Engineers, wrote to a friend: "It 
was Mr. Heath's influence in our talks together (more 
especially in Oxford) on philosophy that had a most 
profound effect, I hope for good, on my character, but 
at any rate on my course of life, opinions, and actions. 
Nothing I know of has had so much effect, and on the 
whole brought so much real happiness. ... I almost 
loved that man, so you will forgive the tone of this letter 
if it appears strange." 

Early in 1914 his friends were surprised to see the 
announcement that Heath had been awarded the Green 
Moral Philosophy Prize for a treatise on " Personality "; 
the book will, I hope, be published at the end of the war. 
He had not told most of his friends that he was writing 
at all; and I remember that some of us amused our- 
selves by writing him pretended letters of congratula- 
tion from various celebrities who were popularly sup- 



222 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

posed to be guilty of "personality" in their political 
speeches, and who offered or requested suggestions for 
its more effective use. He detected us, of course, and 
wrote to me shortly afterwards: "It is my painful duty 
to inform you that the police have tracked to your house 
three letters which have recently been delivered to me 
containing illicit threats and improper comments on a 
question of public interest. Willingly as I acquit you of 
any personal share in the matter ... it is not right that 
Innocence and Respectability — as found in my pupils 
and my scout — should be exposed to even a remote 
chance of such contamination" — as these letters ap- 
parently contained. He threatened prosecution, but 
would be content if the criminals left the university. 

I used during these years to see a great deal of him, 
and had the custom of lunching on Tuesdays, after a 
twelve-o'clock lecture, with him and his colleague G. L. 
Cheesman, a young historian. Cheesman knew all about 
the army of the Roman Empire, and the history of vari- 
ous separate legions, and had travelled in Dalmatia and 
the Balkans. He was a man of generous and brilliant 
mind, an inspiring and vivid personality. Cheesman 
loved argument, and Heath and I loved Cheesman. And 
we differed enough in opinion to keep up a constant 
guerrilla warfare on all kinds of political and intellec- 
tual topics. In politics, Cheesman affected the part of a 
wide-awake, progressive Tory, while Heath and I were 
content to be dull, old-fashioned Radicals. On other 
subjects, of course, the divisions were different. 

I think it was on August 7, 1914, three days after the 
declaration of war, when I had just returned from Lon- 
don, that I had a call on the telephone from Heath, pro- 
posing himself to dinner, and telling me that he and 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 223 

Cheesman had both applied for commissions. The sum- 
mons had come, and both men, so different in tastes and 
opinions, though alike in idealism, had responded to it 
together. They had taken about two days to think the 
matter thoroughly out. Heath came up to our house 
that evening, and one or two other men also. And we 
talked over the war, and Grey's speech, and the resist- 
ance of Liege; and the imminence of danger to France; 
and the relative strength of the British and German 
fleets; and then of our German friends and the times 
we had stayed in various parts of Germany. Later on 
Heath sat down to the piano and played French music, 
Hungarian music, and, lastly, German music, and the 
company sang German songs as a kind of farewell, and 
he and his friends walked back to college. 

He went first to train at Churn, near Oxford. Then 
he obtained a commission in the Sixth Battalion of the 
Royal West Kent Regiment, his home at this time being 
in Bromley, and joined his regiment at a swampy camp 
in the southeastern counties, whose amusing discom- 
forts and oddities he described in many letters. ' ' No self- 
respecting cow," I remember, "would graze in such a 
place." I refrain from mentioning the various camps 
where he was stationed, and the special forms of train- 
ing he went through. It is enough that he became at 
last wearily impatient to go out to France. There were 
frequent rumours of a move: at one time hopes were 
roused by the prospect of a special inspection by a dis- 
tinguished and corpulent veteran "who is being moved 
to-morrow night by mechanical transport from E. . . . 
for that purpose." He opined that "Italy and Kitch- 
ener's Army will remain neutral till the end of the war." 
One comfort was that "Our Adjutant, in whom I have 



224 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

every confidence, informs us that within three months 
we shall all be knocked out." This letter ends with a 
postscript: "In the last stages of our twenty-seven-mile 
march I heard one man ask another if there was a parade 
the next morning. 'Yes,' was the answer; ' half-past- 
four. Top-hats and bathing drawers.'" 

At last, on May 31, 1915, I received the following 
note: "All military movements must be executed with 
profound secrecy, and known to no one except the pop- 
ulation of Aldershot, the station-masters on the southern 
lines, the British mercantile marine, and the friends and 
relatives of the few thousand men concerned. Therefore, 
all I can say to you at this crisis is, Vive la France! Vive 
VArmee de Kitchener! Conspuez Norihcliffe!" 

This cheery tone ran through almost all his letters, 
and was borne out by the vigorous gait and sun-browned 
skin which one saw on his occasional visits to Oxford. 
Military training improved his physical health and 
cheerfulness. He complained that his intellect had be- 
come dormant, but it was not so. He read a good deal 
and thought vigorously. He had at first, like all thought- 
ful Englishmen, a feeling of utter horror at the prospect 
of European war, and an uneasy suspicion that, however 
necessary it might be, now at the last moment, for Eng- 
land to fight, surely our policy for many j r ears back must 
have been somewhere dreadfully at fault. The White 
Paper was the first thing to reassure him; then came the 
study of earlier questions; and in the end he felt confi- 
dence in the wisdom and good faith of British diplomacy 
since 1904, and conceived in particular a great admira- 
tion for Sir Edward Grey. "It seems to me," he wrote 
me once in a time of sorrow, "that most people's chief 
consolation for the loss of their friends now is just the 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 225 

sense of the absolute Tightness of what they have done 
and the way they died." 

Like a true soldier, he was always angry at what he 
considered to be slanders of the enemy. He detested 
atrocity-mongers, and for a time disbelieved the stories 
of German cruelties in Belgium. When the Bryce Re- 
port was published and the evidence became too strong, 
he was convinced. But he never spoke of these subjects, 
and the only reference to them which I can find in his 
letters is a short and unexplained sentence: "It seems 
that the Germans have taken to torturing their pris- 
oners." I think that with him, as with others who had 
joined the army at the same time, this "sense of the abso- 
lute Tightness of what they had done" became stronger 
as time passed. But, to the end, his letters find room for 
mockery of the anti-German mania of the more vulgar 
press, and of the old ladies who knew on unimpeachable 
authority that this or that eminent and august person 
was a "Potsdammer" or a convicted spy. 

His campaigning in France lay through a period of 
discouragement to the British cause. The Russians had 
met their great defeat on the Dunajec before he left Eng- 
land, and continued steadily to retreat during the whole 
period. This great disaster reacted upon our fortunes 
everywhere. The Gallipoli expedition, on which Heath 
had pinned his most confident hopes, first dragged and 
then slowly failed; the final disappointment at Suvla Bay 
took place on August 15. On September 25 the great 
Allied offensive in Champagne and towards Loos began 
with terrific carnage and large success, but the losses 
were too severe and the difficulties ahead increased too 
fast to permit of the advance being continued. During 
September it had become more clear than ever that the 



226 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

Allies could not expect any armed help from America, 
and by the first weeks of October the Kings of Bulgaria 
and Greece had apparently made up their minds that 
our cause was safely lost. Venizelos was dismissed; 
Serbia betrayed by her ally and invaded by her enemies. 

Meanwhile Heath's own health was not very good. 
He had an attack of some sort of blood-poisoning, which 
was at first taken for scarlet fever. On July 21 he was 
wounded in the scalp by a splinter of shell, while resting 
in billets, and insisted on returning to work before it was 
healed. He remained unwell for some time afterwards. 
Still he found a constant interest in the care of his pla- 
toon, and a great pleasure in the men's affection. His 
letters remain steadily cheerful. Discomforts, when 
mentioned at all, are always treated humorously. He 
describes one of his men who had just written an indig- 
nant letter about "them shirkers at home" enjoying 
themselves, "while we are bearing the blunt"; and ex- 
plains that his own platoon at this moment is ' ' bearing the 
blunt" by lying in the sun asleep or playing cards in a 
beautiful rose-garden. Another time he has just been so 
bold as to give a clean shirt to a major; "rather like giv- 
ing a bun to an elephant." Graver misfortunes are met 
in the same way: " The poor old Grand Duke seems to be 
well on his way to Nijni-Novgorod." Now and again 
comes a sudden blaze of anger against the grousers and 
backbiters at home: "What I should really like would 
be to go down Fleet Street with a machine-gun." Just 
once or twice comes a sentence revealing, like a flash of 
light on an abyss, the true horror of the things he did 
not speak about: "These are days when men should be 
born without mothers." 

Like nearly all thoughtful men he was often troubled 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 227 

beforehand by the doubt whether his courage and endur- 
ance would stand the strain of real war. However, at the 
very beginning he distinguished himself by a solitary 
scouting expedition in which he discovered a German 
listening-post, and, later on, the only thing that seems 
to have disturbed him much was the nerve-racking 
effect of the gigantic artillery. He wished "the great 
bullies of guns" would go away, and leave the infantry 
to settle the war in a nice clean manner. "If I had my 
way I should bar out every weapon but the rifle ; and even 
then," he adds, "I should prefer brickbats at three 
quarters of a mile." In the middle of August his most 
intimate friend in the company, Saumarez Mann, was 
very badly wounded while cutting grass in front of the 
parapet. Mann was still an undergraduate at Balliol, 
and Heath's letters convey echoes of the chaff that 
passed between the two friends. "Mann always makes 
me laugh; he is so big," says one; while another orders 
with care a box of chocolates for Mann's twenty-first 
birthday. Fortunately Mann's wound proved not to be 
mortal. Early in September came a greater blow, the 
news of G. L. Cheesman's death at Gallipoli. There was 
probably not a man in the army who was more vividly 
conscious than he of all that Constantinople meant in 
history or more thrilled by the prospect of fighting for 
its recovery. 

At last, on October 8, the end came. It was Heath's 
twenty-eighth birthday. The battalion held a series of 
trenches in front of Vermelles, across the Hulluch road, 
in that stretch of ghastly and shell-tortured black coun- 
try which we now think of as the Loos Salient. For the 
whole day there had been an intense German bombard- 
ment, tearing and breaking the trenches, and presum- 



228 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

ably intended to lead up to a general infantry attack. 
It was decided, in order to prevent this plan developing, 
that the Sixth Battalion should attempt an attack on 
the enemy at "Gun Trench." This was a very difficult 
enterprise in itself, and doubly so to troops already worn 
by a long and fierce bombardment. The charge was 
made by "A" Company about 6.30 and beaten back. It 
was followed by a series of bombing attacks, for which 
a constant supply of bombs had to be kept up across the 
open. It was during this work that Arthur Heath fell, 
shot through the neck. He spoke once, to say, "Don't 
trouble about me," and died almost immediately. 

The whole operation was finely carried out. It failed 
to take Gun Trench, but it seems to have paralyzed the 
attacking power of the enemy. And the Official Report 
states that the commander "considered that the 6th 
R.W. Kents and 7th E. Surrey showed fine military 
qualities in undertaking an attack after such a bombard- 
ment continued throughout the day." As for Arthur 
Heath himself, his platoon sergeant wrote to his par- 
ents: "It will console you to know that a braver man 
never existed. Some few minutes before he met his 
death I heard the exclamation: 'What a man! I would 
follow him anywhere!' These few words express the 
opinion of every one who came into contact with him, 
and we all feel proud to have had the honour of serving 
under him." Another friend, who knew him but slightly, 
wrote: "I can only think of him as one who has left a 
track of light behind." 

Four New College scholars of exceptional intellect and 
character entered the university in 1905 and obtained 
Firsts in their Final Schools in 1909 — Arthur Heath, 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 229 

Leslie Hunter, R. C. Woodhead, and Philip Brown. And 
now all four lie buried on the Western front. Each, of 
course, had his special character and ways and aims; but 
to one who knew them well, there comes from all of them 
a certain uniform impression, the impression of an ex- 
traordinary and yet unconscious high-mindedness. It is 
not merely that they were clever, hard-working, con- 
scientious, honourable, lovers of poetry and beauty; the 
sort of men who could never be suspected of evading a 
duty or, say, voting for their own interest rather than the 
common good. It was, I think, that the standards which 
had become the normal guides of life to them were as 
a matter of plain fact spiritual standards, and not of 
the world nor the flesh. The University of Oxford has 
doubtless a thousand faults, and the present writer 
would be the last to palliate them; but it has, by some 
strange secret of its own, preserved through many cen- 
turies the power of training in its best men a habit of 
living for the things of the spirit. Its philosophy is 
broad and always moving; it is rooted in no orthodoxy, 
and the chief guide of its greatest school is Hellenism, not 
scholasticism. Yet it keeps always living, in generation 
after generation of its best students, a tone of mind like 
that of some cassocked clerk of the Middle Ages, whose 
mental life would shape itself into two aims: in himself 
to glorify God by the pursuit of knowledge, and among 
his fellow men to spread the spirit of Christ. 

Such language may sound strained as applied to a 
group of men who were earning their living amongst us 
in perfectly ordinary ways, as teachers, writers, doctors, 
civil servants, some of them in the law or in business; 
but it implies nothing strained or specially high-strung 
in the quality of their daily lives. There is always a 



230 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

religion of some sort at the root of every man's living. 
Every man is either willing or not willing to sacrifice him- 
self to something which he feels to be higher than him- 
self, though if he is sensible, he will probably not talk 
much about it. And men of conscience and self-mastery 
are fully as human, as varied, and as interesting as any 
weaklings or picturesque scoundrels are. 

Perhaps the first thing that struck one about Arthur 
Heath was his gentleness and modesty. "It was fine," 
says one of his superior officers at Churn camp, "to see 
a first-rate intellect such as his applied to a practical 
matter that was strange to him. And he was so modest 
about himself, and never dreamed how we all admired 
him." The last words strike one as exactly true. An- 
other quality was his affectionateness, or rather the large 
space that affection occupied in his mind. Affection, in- 
deed, is too weak a term to describe the feeling that 
seems to glow behind the words of many of his letters 
home; for instance, the beautiful letter to his mother, 
written on July 11, about the prospect of death. He was 
a devoted son and brother, interested in every detail of 
home life, and not forgetting the family birthdays. And 
the same quality pervaded much of his relations towards 
friends and acquaintances. He was the sort of man 
whom people confide in, and consult in their troubles. 

He was a bold thinker; he held clear opinions of his 
own on all sorts of sub j ects. He often differed from other 
people, especially from people in authority. Yet he was 
never for a moment bitter or conceited or anxious to con- 
tradict. There was no scorn about him; and his irre- 
pressible sense of fun, so far from being unkind, had an 
element of positive affection in it. 

In comparing him with other men who have fought 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 231 

and fallen in this war, I feel that one of his most marked 
characteristics was his instinct for understanding. In 
the midst of strong feeling and intense action his quiet, 
penetrating intelligence was always at work. Even at 
the front, where most men become absorbed in their im- 
mediate job, he was full of strategical problems, of the 
war as a whole and the effect of one part of it on another, 
of home politics, and the influences he believed to be 
baneful or salutary. His courage was like that of the 
Brave Man in Aristotle, who knows that a danger is 
dangerous, and fears it, but goes through with it be- 
cause he knows that he ought. He liked to understand 
what he was doing. He was ready, of course, to obey 
without question, but he would then know that he was 
obeying without question. He was ready to give his life 
and all the things that he valued in life, his reading and 
music and philosophy, but he liked to know what he was 
giving them for. After a study of the causes of the war, 
he writes from France : " One of the few things in all these 
intrigues and ambitions that can be considered with 
pleasure is the character of Sir Edward Grey. ... I am 
very puzzled about home politics; cannot understand 
the Welsh miners or the Coalition, and feel all convic- 
tions shaken except a profound belief in Mr. Asquith." 
After his first wound : ' ' Fear is a very odd thing. When 
I was up in the trenches about thirty yards from them 
[the enemy], I got over the parapet and crawled out to 
examine a mine-crater without anything worse than a 
certain amount of excitement. But when we are back 
here [in Brigade Reserve] and the shells start screaming 
over, I feel thoroughly afraid, and there is no denying 
it." A superior officer once warned him not to think so 
highly of his men: he should accept it as a fact that 



232 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

"these men are damned stupid, and what's more, they're 
not anxious to do more than they can help." Heath 
bowed to the officer's superior knowledge; yet he did 
think he found in even the less promising men a certain 
intelligence and keenness: "In fact I am like the man 
who tried to be a philosopher, but found that cheerful- 
ness would break in." 

He never groused about hardships, nor yet about the 
evils of war. The war was something he had to carry 
through, and he would make the best of it until it killed 
him. He realized the horror of a war of attrition, and 
the true nature of these days when " men should be born 
without mothers." Yet he took considerable interest in 
numerical calculations about the length of time that 
would be necessary, at the existing rate of wastage, to 
make the German line untenable. And his calculations 
always pointed towards the certainty of our ultimate 
victory. When a phrase of poignant pathos occurs in the 
letters, it is never by his own intention. Thus, in speaking 
of some particular operation of trench warfare he writes: 
"Gillespie taught it to me, and now I am teaching 
Geoffrey Smith." Gillespie, Heath, Geoffrey Smith; it 
was in that order, too, that they taught one another a 
greater lesson. A. D. Gillespie died a brave death in 
September, 1915, Heath in October of the same year, 
and Geoffrey Smith in the July following. But the full 
tragedy underlying the words can be realized only by 
one who knew those three rare spirits. 

A wonderful band of scholars it was that went out in 
these days from William of Wykeham's old foundation, 
young men quite exceptional in intellectual powers, in 
feeling for the higher values of life, in the sense of 
noblesse oblige, and in loving-kindness towards the world . 



OXFORD AND THE WAR 233 

of men. The delicate feeling which forms the founda- 
tion of scholarship was in them not a mere function of 
the intellect, but a grace pervading all their human rela- 
tions. No grossness or graspingness ever found a foot- 
hold in them, no germ of that hate which rejoices to be- 
lieve evil and to involve good things with bad. Heath 
played his beloved German music the night before he 
left Oxford. Cheesman's latest letter to me was a de- 
fence of the Turks in Gallipoli from some misconception 
which he thought was in my mind. Woodhead, waiting 
to advance under machine-gun fire and knowing that the 
first man to rise would be a certain victim, chose care- 
fully the right moment and rose first. The only words 
that Philip Brown spoke after he was mortally wounded 
were words of thought and praise for his servant. Leslie 
Hunter, on the day before he died, spoke to a friend of 
his presentiment that death was coming, and then lay 
for a while in a grassy meadow, singing, "Im vrunder- 
schonen Monat Mai" 

While I was writing these lines came the news of an- 
other of the band, a most brilliant young scholar and his- 
torian, Leonard Butler, together with his colonel's state- 
ment in the " Times " notice : " I never saw a finer death." 
And this morning, as I revise them, yet another: not 
indeed a member of this group, since he was older and 
had already achieved fame on a wider field of action, but 
one whom I think of still as a young Wykehamist under- 
graduate and Ireland Scholar, by nature and fortune 
perhaps the most richly gifted of all, and as swift as any 
to give up to the cause that summoned him all the shin- 
ing promise of his life — Raymond Asquith. 

One after another, a sacrifice greater than can be 
counted, they go; and will go until the due end is won. 



234 FAITH, WAR, ANL POLICY 

At the close of the Michaelmas Term of 1914 there was 
a memorial service at New College, as in other colleges, 
for those of its members who had fallen in the war. It 
seemed a long list even then, though it was scarcely at its 
beginning. And those who attended the service will not 
forget the sight of the white-haired warden, full of blame- 
less years, kneeling before the altar on the bare stones, 
and praying that it might be granted to us, the survivors, 
to live such lives as these young men who had gone be- 
fore us. His words interpreted, I think, the unconscious 
feeling of most of those who heard him. It certainly 
changes the whole aspect of the world, even to a man 
whose life is advanced and his character somewhat set, 
when the men who were his intimate friends are proved 
to have had in them, not merely the ordinary virtues and 
pleasantnesses of common life, but something high and 
resplendent which one associates with the stories of old 
saints or heroes; still more when there is burned into 
him the unforgettable knowledge that men whom he 
loved have died for him. 



XIII 

THE TURMOIL OF WAR 1 
(March, 1917) 

Ladies and Gentlemen: — 

I have seldom had a more difficult speech to deliver 
than that which lies before me this evening. Often 
enough since choosing the subject, I have had an impulse 
to turn tail and fly for refuge to some comparatively 
simple and undisturbing question, like the internal re- 
lations of the Ukrainian peoples or the Serbs-Bulgarian 
Dialects of the district of Monastic But in times like 
these if a man undertakes to speak to his fellow citizens 
in such a society as this, serious and half-religious in its 
outlook, it seems a clear duty that he should speak 
sincerely of the subject that is most in his mind. I choose 
the subject about which I feel most uncomfortable hour 
by hour of my life; and though I have little to say that 
we have not all of us thought and said before, I dare say 
there will be some comfort to me and to others who feel 
as I do in our having tried to puzzle the matter out 
together. 

The objects of this society are two, and are expressed 
in its name. First, we are ready to Fight; we are not 
pacifists; we believe in the duty of fighting. But sec- 
ondly, we fight only for the Right. We dedicate our 
effort as a society to the Right and all that it implies: 
public faith between States and Governments, justice 

1 Address to the Fight for Right League, March 4, 1917 r 



236 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

between the strong and the weak, peace and good-will 
between man and man, between nation and nation. We 
oppose with all our strength the rule of naked Force, as 
it seems to us to be asserted by the German Govern- 
ment. And, deliberately and, as we believe, of neces- 
sity, in order to overthrow this assertion of the rule of 
Force, we appeal to Force as our champion. This sounds 
illogical, but it is not so. We appealed first to all other 
means. We began with no ill-will, with no touch of 
secret ambition. We tried to maintain the power of 
Right by arbitration or conciliation between us and our 
neighbours. And in the last resort, when we did appeal 
to Force, it was not to mere naked Force, not to Force 
as a master. We did not put the sword upon the throne. 
The Force we appealed to was the obedient minister of 
a free and constitutional State, which was seeking not 
conquest nor its own aggrandizement, but the reestab- 
lishment of Right among the nations of Europe. That 
was the attitude in which Great Britain took up the gage 
of battle. "We hope," said our great Prime Minister in 
November, 1914, "that the longer the trial lasts and the 
more severe it becomes, the more clearly shall we emerge 
from it the champions of a just cause; and we shall have 
achieved, not only for ourselves, — for our direct and 
selfish interests are small, — but for Europe and for 
civilization and for the great principle of small nation- 
alities, and for liberty and justice, one of their most 
enduring victories." 

Let us take those aims, for a moment, one by one. We 
shall "achieve an enduring victory," first, "for our- 
selves, but our own interests are small." That has been 
made plain, for example, in the Allied Note to President 
Wilson about our war aims. In that rehearsal of the 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 237 

larger aims of all the Allied Powers, Great Britain was 
conspicuous in that she asked for nothing. (I do not, of 
course, say that we shall in the end acquire nothing. But 
if we end by allowing our colonies to annex certain of 
the conquered German colonies, or if we ourselves con- 
tinue to hold the district of Bagdad and Kut, it will cer- 
tainly not be due to any deliberate plan conceived from 
the beginning.) 

"A victory for the independence of small nationali- 
ties": is that too much to claim? No. For clearly the 
freedom of every nation in Europe is menaced by the 
policy which forced war upon Serbia in spite of all con- 
cessions, and destroyed Belgium in spite of her absolute 
innocence and her explicit treaty. If that policy tri- 
umphed, how much freedom would remain to Holland, 
Denmark, Switzerland, or any other of the smaller na- 
tions? 

"A victory for civilization": is that too much? No. 
The appalling barbarization of warfare, the atmosphere 
of deliberate and obscene terrorism, the studied con- 
tempt for international movements and Public Right 
which Germany has introduced as an essential element 
in her war-policy, are not only a danger to civilization 
in the future, but are in themselves the absolute denial 
and destruction of civilization. Nor could any move- 
ment be compatible with the future of civilization which 
rested on the exaltation of Turkey, by war in Europe 
and in Asia by hideous massacre. 

"A victory for Europe": is that too much? At least 
it is clear that almost all free Europe believes we are 
fighting for her. Germany and the Austrian Govern- 
ment and apparently the Swedish Government think 
otherwise. France, Russia, Portugal, Italy, Serbia, 



238 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

Montenegro, Rumania, a large proportion of the sub- 
jects of Austria, and most of the peoples of Holland, 
Norway, Denmark, and Spain are with us, as well as the 
greatest and most fearless of all neutrals, the United 
States of America. There might be a Europe, there 
might be a rich and fairly peaceful Europe, under Ger- 
many's domination; but the peace would be, as Lord 
Grey has called it, " an iron peace," and the riches would 
be produced for German masters by masses of men 
without freedom and almost without nationality. 

"A victory for liberty and justice": that is the clear- 
est claim of all. No liberty could live either under or 
beside a victorious Prussia, and it was only Germany's 
set and deliberate refusal to consider the claims of justice 
that precipitated the war. Since I wrote these words our 
claim to represent the cause of liberty has received a 
tremendous confirmation. Our ally Russia has become 
a free nation. The event has shown that the cause of 
autocracy and the cause of the Allies could not remain 
permanently reconciled; the Russia that is our natural 
comrade in arms must be Russia free. 

The case seems clear. The policy of this League seems 
both intelligible and justified. We will fight, we will kill 
and suffer and die, rather than willingly see all con- 
science banished from international policy, or betray 
ourselves and weaker nations to the mercy of trium- 
phant wrong. 

And yet — is it so plain as all that? We know it is 
not. We all know — or, if we do not, Thucydides did his 
best two thousand years ago to explain it to us — that 
war, at any rate between States of approximately equal 
power, is not an instrument that can be directed with 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 239 

precision to a perfectly definite aim and turned off and 
on like a garden hose. It is a flood on which, when once 
the flood-gates are opened, those who have opened them 
will be borne away. In August, 1914, for the sake of our 
own rights, of justice and of humanity, we appealed to 
Force. Force entered and took the centre of the stage. 
It became a struggle, not of Right against Force, but of 
one Force against another. The struggle deepened, be- 
came closer, more terrible, more fraught with anxiety. 
It became very nearly a struggle for existence. We gave 
all our minds to it. Gradually, inevitably, increasingly, 
the fight began to absorb us. And while the men who 
guided England and expressed the spirit of England in 
the early days of the war were men of lofty spirit and a 
profound sense of responsibility, idealists like Sir Ed- 
ward Grey and philosophers like Mr. Asquith and later 
on Mr. Balfour, as the war proceeded, there came a 
change. England ceased to be occupied with questions 
of right and wrong; she became occupied with the ques- 
tions of fighting and killing. We turned, so to speak, 
from the men who could give wise counsel; we called on 
all who could fight, and we liked best those who could 
fight hardest. 

And here comes the subject of my address, a subject 
that is rather terrible to a man of conscience. Do you 
remember how Sir Francis Drake once had to hang one 
of his officers; and how before executing the sentence he 
passed some time in prayer, and then shook hands with 
the offender? That is the sort of spirit, perhaps the only 
spirit, in which any man of conscience can without in- 
ward misery approach the killing and torturing of his 
fellow creatures. He is ready, if need be, to shed blood; 
but he must know that he does it for the Right, and be- 



240 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

cause he must. It would sicken him to think that while 
doing it, he was secretly paying off old scores, or making 
money out of it, or, still worse, enjoying the cruelty. 
This slaying of men, if you do it for the right motive, 
may be a high and austere duty; if you admit any wrong 
motive, it begins to be murder — and hypocritical 
murder. 

And yet, as soon as you let loose in war the whole of a 
big nation, you have handed over that high and austere 
duty to agents who cannot possibly perform it : to masses 
of very ordinary people, and not only of ordinary people, 
but of stupid and vulgar and drunken and covetous and 
dishonest and tricky and cruel and brutal people, who 
will transform your imagined crusade into a very dif- 
ferent reality. 

When the war was flung into the midst of all this 
seething, heterogeneous mass of men who make up 
Great Britain or the British Empire, it called out nat- 
urally those who in their different ways were most akin 
to it. It called out both the heroes and the ruffians. But 
in the main, as the war atmosphere deepened among the 
civilian population, the men who were interested in 
justice became unimportant; those who were specially 
interested in humanity were advised to be discreet in 
their utterances. It is quite others who came to the front : 
the men — for such exist in all countries — who believe 
in Force and love Force; who love to wage bloody bat- 
tles, or at least to read about them and lash their 
younger neighbours into them; who rage against the 
"mere lawyers" who care about right and wrong; de- 
spise the puling sentimentalists who have not deadened 
their hearts to all feeling of human compassion; loathe 
the doctrinaire politicians who dare to think about the 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 241 

welfare of future generations instead of joining in the 
carnival of present passion. 

What is to be our attitude to this change? Does it 
invalidate the whole position of our Society? I think 
not. {^* 

We knew we should let loose these evil powers, but we 
believe we can cling to our duty in spite of them. It was 
part of the price we had to pay, if we wished to save Eu- 
rope, to save the small nationalities, to save liberty and 
civilization. And it is by no means all the price. It is 
only an extra. It comes as an addition to the long bill of 
dead and wounded, of the mountains of unatoned and 
inexplicable, suffering, the vista of future famine and 
poverty, and the beggary of nations. And it is not the 
only extra. There is something that goes wrong in us 
ourselves. 

On every side one sees the influence of that queer, dis- 
torting force which protects our tired nerves by cheapen- 
ing and marring all our high emotions. We entered on 
this war in a state of moral exaltation. If ever in the 
course of my life I have been privileged to look on pure 
heroism, it was in some of the young men who volun- 
teered for military service in the first few months of the 
war. It is not difficult to get vigorous young men to risk 
their lives. But the men I mean did far more than that. 
They gave up almost all they cared for in life, all their 
enjoyments, their intellectual aims, the causes for which 
they were working; they gave up a life of constructive- 
ness and brotherly love, to which they were devoted, to 
undertake a life, not only of great hardship and danger, 
— that is simple, — but one consecrated to malignity 
and destruction, which they loathed. And the motive 
which impelled and inspired them was a faith, a very 



242 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

high faith, that a crisis had arisen in the history of man- 
kind which made this strange sacrifice desirable. A vast 
crime was suddenly before us; a crime striding to accom- 
plishment, almost triumphant, and so dire in its ultimate 
meaning that each of these men felt within him, " That 
must never happen while I live!" In that faith they 
turned from their old ideals, from their hopes, their 
causes, their books, their music, their social work, or 
their philosophy; they served to the utmost of their 
strength and the greater number of them are now dead. 

I speak of the class of men I knew best. But the same 
spirit in different degrees ran through the larger part of 
Great Britain. 

That is how it happens. You face the beginning of a 
war with intense feeling. You feel the casualties, you 
feel the pain of the wounded, you feel the horror of what 
your friends have to do, as well as what they have to 
suffer. You feel also the uplifting emotion of sacrifice for 
a great cause. 

But you cannot possibly go on feeling like that. War 
is a matter of endurance, and if you allow yourself to 
feel continually in this intense way, you will break down. 
In mere self-protection a man, whether soldier or civil- 
ian, grows an envelope of defensive callousness. Instinc- 
tively, by a natural process, you avoid feeling the hor- 
rors, and you cease to climb the heights of emotion. 
After all, an average man may be sorry for the Czecho- 
slovaks; he may even look them up on a map; but he 
cannot go on grieving about them year in and year out. 
He may realize in flashes the actual meaning in terms of 
human misery of one hour of the war which he is not 
fighting indeed, but ordering and paying for. But he 
could not live if he did so steadily. He proceeds, quite 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 243 

naturally, first to put the enemy's suffering out of ac- 
count. He deserves all he gets, anyhow. Then the suf- 
ferings of the victim nations: he is very sorry, of course, 
for Belgium, Poland, Serbia, Rumania, the Armenians. 
But it is no good being sorry. Better to get on with the 
war! Then the sufferings of his own people, the young 
men and middle-aged men who have gone out to France 
or the East. He cannot quite forget these; he must think 
about them a good deal and the thought is painful. So 
he transforms them. When they once put on khaki, they 
became, he imagines, quite different. They were once 
James Mitchell the clerk, Thomas Brown the railway 
porter, John Baxter the Wesleyan carpenter. But now 
they are " Tommies.' ' And we invent a curious psy- 
chology for them, to persuade ourselves somehow that 
they like the things they do, and do not so very much 
mind the things they suffer. 

And then, in spite of all this protective callousness, in 
spite of the pretences we build up in order to make 
ourselves comfortable, there continues underneath the 
brazen armour of our contentment a secret horror, a 
raging irritation — how shall I put it? It is the cease- 
less, bitter sobbing of all that used once to be recognized 
as the higher part of our nature, but now is held prisoner, 
stifled and thrust aside . . . because the need of the 
world is for other things. And some of us throw up the 
moral struggle and go blindly for pacifism. (I met a man 
lately who had left the useful and peaceful work he had 
been allowed by the military authorities to follow, be- 
cause he felt he could never find peace except in prison 
or on the scaffold.) Most of us, I believe, do our duty as 
best we can; trying amid so much heroic fortitude to 
show a little decent power of self-denial, and amid such 



244 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

oceans of cruelty to scatter the few drops of personal 
kindness that we can. And a third set, almost all civil- 
ians, led partly by party passion and self-interest, partly 
by the overflow of angry impulses which cannot find 
vent in honest fighting, partly by mere vulgarity and 
love of excitement, dance a kind of devil's chorus in fury 
lest any calm wisdom, any reasoned judgement, any 
scrupulous honour, should still be allowed a voice in the 
future of England. 

Let me read you some passages from a letter written 
by a soldier, not an officer, about his impressions of us 
civilians in England when he returned after a long and 
meritorious time of service in France. He seems to see 
us across a gulf of mutual misunderstanding. 

You speak lightly [he says]; you assume that we shall speak 
lightly of things . . . which to us are solemn or terrible. You 
seem ashamed, as if they were a kind of weakness, of the ideas 
which sent us to France, and for which thousands of sons and 
lovers have died. You calculate the profits to be derived from 
War after the War, as though the unspeakable agonies of the 
Somme were an item in a commercial proposition. You make 
us feel that the country to which we have returned is not the 
country for which we went out to fight. . . . We used to blas- 
pheme and laugh and say, "Oh, it's only the newspapers. 
People at home can't really be like that." But after some 
months in England I have come to the conclusion that your 
papers don^t caricature you so mercilessly as we supposed. 
No, the fact is you and we have drifted apart. We have 
slaved for Rachel, but it looks as if we had got to live with 
Leah. 

He speaks of the ideas with which we entered upon 
the war. 

How often, fatigued beyond endurance, or horrified by one's 
own actions, does one not recur to those ideas for support and 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 245 

consolation ! It is worth it/because ... It is awful, but I need 
not loathe myself because . . . We see things which you can 
only imagine. We are strengthened by reflections which you 
have abandoned. . . . While you seem to have been surrender- 
ing your creeds with the nervous facility of a Tudor official, our 
foreground may be different, but our background is the same. 
It is that of August to November, 1914. We are your ghosts. 

I can forgive you for representing war as a spectacle instead 
of a state of existence. I suppose that to a correspondent who 
is shepherded into an observation post on a show day, it does 
seem spectacular. But the representation of the human beings 
concerned is unpardonable. There has been invented a kind of 
conventional soldier, whose emotions and ideas are those which 
you find it most easy to assimilate with your coffee and 
marmalade. And this "Tommy" is a creature at once ridicu- 
lous and disgusting. He is represented as invariably " cheer- 
ful," as revelling in the excitement of war, as finding sport in 
killing other men/ as "hunting Germans out of dug-outs as a 
terrier hunts rats," as overwhelming with kindness the captives 
of his bow and spear. The last detail is true to life, but the 
emphasis you lay on it is both unintelligent and insulting. Do 
you expect us to hurt them or starve them? 

Of the first material reality of war, from which everything 
else takes its colour, the endless and loathsome physical ex- 
haustion, you say little; for it would spoil the piquancy, the 
verve, of the picture. Of your soldiers' internal life, the con- 
stant collision of contradictory moral standards, the liability 
of the soul to be crushed by mechanical monotony . . . the 
sensation of taking a profitless part in a game played by 
monkeys and organized by lunatics, you realize, I think, 
nothing. Are you so superficial as to imagine that men do not 
feel emotions of which they rarely speak: or do you suppose 
that, as a cultured civilian once explained to me, these feelings 
are confined to "gentlemen" and are not shared by "common 
soldiers" ? . . . 

They carry their burden with little help from you. For 
when men work in the presence of death, they cannot be 
satisfied with conventional justifications of a sacrifice which 
seems to the poor weakness of our flesh intolerable. They 
hunger for an assurance which is absolute, for a revelation of 



246 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

the spirit as poignant and unmistakable as the weariness of 
their suffering bodies. ... To most of us it must come from you 
or not at all. For an army does not live by munitions alone, 
but also by fellowship in a moral idea or purpose. And that, 
unless you renew your faith, you cannot give us. You cannot 
give it us because you do not possess it. 

These are grave charges. I will presently say a word 
or two in answer to them, but for the present the serious 
fact for us to realize is that such charges are made. The 
man who makes them is not a pacifist, but a good sol- 
dier; not an eccentric, not a sentimentalist nor a man of 
immature judgement. Quite the reverse. And he feels, 
on returning to England after two years of war, that we 
have not only sent him and his fellows out to die for us, 
but that in their absence we have betrayed them. We 
sent them out to fight for an England which was the 
champion of Freedom and the Human Conscience and 
International Right; and when once they were gone we 
cast these phrases away, having no more use for them, 
and left them to fight and die for the "Times" and the 
"Daily Mail." 

Now, there are many pleas that can be urged in ex- 
tenuation of these charges. I will mention them pres- 
ently. I wish first to urge another point. Admit for the 
moment that they are largely true; that we have fallen 
from our ideals. Would it have altered our action, ought 
it to have altered our action, in August, 1914? If we had 
known that, in addition to the awful waste of human 
life, in addition to the incalculable sum of suffering, in 
addition to the desperate impoverishment of Europe, 
the war was likely to bring upon us a certain lowering 
of the national ideals, and a time of bitter and perhaps 
sordid reaction; if we had known all this, should we still 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 247 

have declared war against the German Empire? My 
answer is, Yes. 

As a matter of fact we did know it, or at least surmise 
it. I was looking back at some speeches I made myself 
in 1914 and 1915 and I find that I mentioned explicitly 
every one of these evils among the probable results of 
the war. And I have no doubt that others did the same. 
We foresaw it; and we disliked and dreaded the prospect. 
We would have done almost anything, have sacrificed 
almost anything, to avoid both the war and its conse- 
quences; but we were faced by the one thing we could 
not do, we were asked for the one sacrifice we could not 
give. We could not agree that, while we still had life 
and strength, the world should with our consent be con- 
quered by naked Force and held down by Terrorism. 

However badly we may have been, or are yet likely to 
be, demoralized by this war, that is a lesser evil than if all 
free Europe were conquered by Germany. And even to 
be conquered by Germany now, after all we have suf- 
fered, would be a lesser evil than to have submitted to 
her without a struggle. If after the invasion of Belgium 
the rest of Europe had submitted to the Germans with- 
out a struggle, it would have saved millions of lives, tons 
of treasure, oceans of suffering; but it would have meant 
a greater evil to mankind than any such measurable 
losses. It would have meant that the Spirit of Man 
itself was dead. 

And now for my pleas in extenuation. I think the 
charges brought by my friend in that letter (the whole 
letter, by the way, has been printed as a leaflet and can 
be bought from the " Nation" office) are in some degree 
true. At least they waken in my own mind a feeling of 
mixed guilt in myself and resentment against others 



248 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

more guilty. But I believe that, in the natural pain and 
shock of his disappointment, he has felt the marks of our 
corruption to be more permanent and deep-rooted than 
they are. Many of the symptoms that seem worst are 
really misinterpreted. 

Have you noticed how, at a play, when a particularly 
moving or touching moment occurs, you will always hear 
some people laugh? You probably feel in your fury that 
they are brute beasts, outcasts from the human race; 
but they are not. The explanation merely is that, as is 
usual at touching moments, they had two contrary im- 
pulses at the same time, one bidding them cry and one 
bidding them laugh. And, in a natural self-protection, 
they checked the first and indulged the second. 

All this callous cheerfulness, all this gay brutality, 
with which people sometimes speak of bursting shells 
and "the leg of a fat Hun performing circles in the air," 
or of poking into dug-outs with bayonets and "picking 
out the Boches like periwinkles on a pin" ... all that 
loathsome stuff is to a great extent mere self-protection. 
It is a kind of misplaced tact. Something more real, 
more near the truth, more undisguisedly horrible, is just 
round the corner of the speaker's mind, and he is de- 
termined not to let it show itself. If it emerged, it 
would make every one feel awkward. ... I do not say 
that this sort of language is not bad; it is, very bad, both 
in origin and in effect. But I do say strongly that it is 
not profound, and is not what it appears to be. 

Similarly, when a man with a conscience or sense of 
justice in him goes along the streets of London and looks 
at the posters, his heart sometimes fails him and he 
thinks, "Is this the nation for which I am fighting, and 
for which my friends have died?" And the answer is 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 249 

No. It is not. Those posters do not represent the na- 
tion. They do not really represent even the wretched 
man who made them. They are based, no doubt, on 
something in his mind. But that something has been 
first distorted in the way he imagines will please people 
inferior to himself; next, concentrated and squashed so 
as to be expressed in two or three words; and then 
"gingered up" to attract the notice of a tired and busy 
crowd whose eyes are dazed with hosts of similar plac- 
ards. 

Our nation itself is nothing like as unjust and greedy, 
nothing like as factious and fond of lies, as intolerant, 
as cruel, or as stupid as it would seem, and does seem, 
to a foreigner studying the streets and the newspapers. 
For a purely temporary cause, we cannot express our- 
selves freely while the war lasts. " Why not? " asks some 
unrepentant Radical, and the answer is easy. Simply 
because there are sixty million people listening who want 
to kill us, and we must be careful that they do not over- 
hear anything that may help them in doing so. Parlia- 
ment is muzzled and largely impotent ; and Parliament 
is the one place, the one great institution, in which any 
statement, however unpopular, can be made; and where 
any false statement made can be challenged and an- 
swered. 

That is what makes Parliament the unique and irre- 
placeable guardian of our liberties. The newspapers can 
never possibly take its place. Many of them, I gladly 
admit, do their best under uphill conditions. I am often 
filled with admiration for the power with which some 
few of our great journalists maintain day after day, 
under every circumstance of trial, the same high level of 
thought and style, of self-command and of patriotism. 



250 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

But such men are striving against the stream. Such cen- 
soring of newspapers as there is tells almost entirely in 
one direction, and that the same direction as popular 
prejudice. It is no corrective. While war lasts, every 
voice, every fact, every principle, which seems likely 
to weaken the war-spirit is feared and disapproved and 
often suppressed. I do not wish to complain of this one- 
sided censorship, though every one admits that its work- 
ing is far from perfect. I only want to point out that it 
is one-sided. In every subject you can take, as it were, 
a sort of central line which represents roughly the opin- 
ion of the moderate man; other opinions are either to the 
left of it or to the right of it. I do not, of course, say that 
the moderate man is necessarily right. But suppose you 
suppress or fiercely discourage all expression of opinion 
on one side of that line while allowing it perfect freedom 
on the other side; the result is obviously not a fair rep- 
resentation of the opinion of the country. Opinions 
which tell in favour of justice, of moderation, of all the 
qualities which mankind once thought good and will 
assuredly think good again, are suppressed or discour- 
aged; the opposite opinions are let loose like wild asses 
stamping and braying above the graves of the dead. The 
spectacle that sickened my friend was not a true picture 
of the nation as it is, nor any reflection of the minds of 
the real men and women who go home at night to think 
much of their sons and husbands in the trenches, and a 
little also of the unhappy people in Serbia or Poland or 
France, or it may be in Germany. The outside spectacle 
presented by any nation is, I believe, nearly always a 
worse and uglier thing than the nature of any average 
individual. The men and women themselves are better 
than the newspapers and the streets. 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 251 

Some of you will remember Plato's words in the " Re- 
public," answering those who talk violently of the corrup- 
tion of the young by false teachers, and his description 
of the real false teacher, the real sophist, to whom the 
corruption of the world is mostly due. Plato was not 
much afraid of sophists like Mr. Shaw or Mr. Morel or 
Mr. Snowden; what he dreaded was the great intangible 
sophist, with no body to be kicked and no soul to be 
damned, who lurks in posters and headlines and tri- 
umphant majorities. 

Do you believe in young persons corrupted by bad teachers, 
and in individual bad teachers who corrupt them, to any 
serious extent? Don't you know that the people who talk like 
this are themselves the great False Teachers, and always edu- 
cating people and finishing them off, young and old, men and 
women, exactly to their own taste? 

When do you mean? said he. 

Whenever they sit down together in a crowd, in a public 
meeting or a law court or a theatre or a camp, or any other 
collection of human beings, and make a great noise and 
shower praise on various things that are said or done and 
blame on others, always exaggerating, whichever it is; and 
they shout and clap their hands, till the walls of the place 
where they are and the rocks outside reecho and multiply the 
noise of all the praise and blame? Where do you think a young 
man's heart sinks to then? What sort of private education can 
hold out, and not be flooded and swept away on the torrent of 
all that praise and blame? Till the lad agrees and says all the 
same things are good or evil as the crowd says, and follows the 
same lines as they follow and becomes just like them? 

Of course he must. 

Why, I have not yet mentioned the great Must. The real 
Must which these teachers and sophists bring to bear, if their 
words are not enough. Don't you know what waits for the 
man who is not persuaded, confiscations and outlawries and 
death? 1 

1 Plato, Republic, p. 492. 



252 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

I do not mean to say that these words specially apply 
to us. We have no confiscations or executions. We have, 
considering the greatness of the crisis and the prolonged 
strain, comparatively little of the persecuting spirit. 
The old Liberal England cannot be killed in a day. But 
I quote these words as a reminder of two things: first, 
that at present, as in all times of great public excite- 
ment, there is necessarily this huge, intangible sophist 
at his work, perverting wisdom and stirring up the im- 
pulses of terror and hatred; and secondly and with more 
emphasis, that, after all, he will not be there forever. 
Peace must come some day, and after peace eventually 
a return to normal life. 

First, that the heart of England must not be judged 
by these outward manifestations; and next, that even 
these outward manifestations are not things that will 
last. 

To those who are troubled, as I have been troubled, 
by thoughts of the kind raised by my friend's letter, I 
would venture to say, therefore, these words of counsel: 
First, let us be sure in our hearts that we are not our- 
selves false to the ideals of 1914; that the cause for which 
our friends have died or suffered, the cause for which we 
have assented to the shedding of torrents of innocent 
blood, shall never by us be degraded to anything lower 
than the cause of Public Right and of Human Freedom. 
Let us be sure that, to the best of our powers, we do 
not, we Englishmen for whom others have died, let the 
champion of Public Right turn aside to persecution or 
to lawlessness. 

Next, let us keep our faith in our fellow man and our 
fellow countryman. He has astonished you by a heroism 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 253 

and self-sacrifice which seemed to carry us back into the 
great ages of legend; do not now lose faith in him about 
lesser things. I do not ask you to idealize soldiers as 
such. It is a foolish practice. But remember that our 
soldiers are men, and very brave men, and that they 
have seen with their eyes and touched with the hands 
realities of which we scarcely dare to think. They have 
learned many things that we shall never know. And one 
thing they have learned is the nature of war. The gen- 
eral may possibly be a lover of war; while war lasts he is 
a very great man, indeed, and when peace comes he may 
have to retire upon half-pay to Brighton. But the men 
in the firing line are not lovers of war; hardly more so 
than the ravaged and tortured peasants of the invaded 
territories. 

The women and old men at home may hate the enemy. 
Hate is an emotion which grows when you cannot give 
vent to normal anger. But the soldier has given more 
vent to his anger than he ever needed. He has often 
more sympathy than hate for the man in the trenches 
opposite, labouring miserably in the same mud and snow 
as himself, caught in the same bewildering net, deafened 
by the same monstrous noises and torn by the same 
shreds of iron. 

Mercy has not passed out of the world, nor yet justice. 

We are driven back to a sort of mysticism. Mankind 
knows that suffering itself is evil, but the wish to cause 
suffering is incalculably and disproportionately worse. 
All the cruel deeds, all the killing and maiming that is 
done day by day, night by night, over most of Europe, 
are not the real will, not the real free actions of any man. 
It is all a thing that has happened. Who among men 
ever wished for this war? We know that our own states- 



254 FAITH, WAR, AND POLICY 

men strained every nerve to prevent it. The soldiers 
fighting never wished it, nor yet the nations behind the 
soldiers. The world itself, the great, suffering world, 
never wished it. No one wished it. Not the great crim- 
inals and semi-maniacs in Germany and Austria who 
brought it about; not even they wished for this. What 
they wished was wicked enough, Heaven help them; 
when they dreamed of their triumphal march on Paris 
and the rest of the frischer frohlicher Krieg, the "fresh 
and joyous war." But they never wished for this that 
has come. They thought it would be quite different. 
They are staring aghast, like Frankenstein, at the mon- 
ster they have created. 

It makes some difference in one's ultimate judgement, 
it saves one from a wild reaction against all organized 
human society as an accursed thing, if we realize that 
the war is not really the work of man's will. It is more 
a calamity to pity than a crime to curse. 

The man who would prolong the war one day longer 
than is necessary for the establishment of the Right, if 
there is such a man, is if possible more wicked than the 
wretches who caused the war. Because he will know 
what he is doing, and they did not. Yet neither must we 
wish to end it a day sooner. 

One is sometimes bewildered by this drag in two con- 
trary directions, bewildered till it is hard to see clear. 
Then the right thing is to go back to August, 1914, and 
remember how we first faced the question of war, and 
how the great leaders of the nation then guided us. We 
knew the war was horrible, and we faced it as the al- 
ternative to something worse. I believe that, among the 
statesmen and others whom I knew personally, almost 
every thoughtful and honest man who then made up his 



THE TURMOIL OF WAR 255 

mind to support the war, faced it very much as he would 
face his own death. We made our choice, and we are 
paying, and for many months still shall go on paying, 
the price that we agreed to pay. All these deaths, all 
these broken hearts — we agreed to them beforehand. 
But we agreed to them as the price to be paid for a 
certain result, the only result in the range of human 
practice which could justify so ghastly a traffic. We 
agreed to pay this price in part, perhaps, for the saving 
of our national existence, but beyond that, not for the 
aggrandizement of ourselves or our country, not for ter- 
ritory or trade or profit, most certainly not for the sake of 
injuring our rivals or taking revenge upon our enemies, 
or stealing advantages over our political opponents. We 
agreed to pay this price in order that the idea of Public 
Right should not be swept out of existence; that the free 
peoples of Europe should remain free, and some at least 
of her ancient sores be cleansed; and that the issue of our 
great ordeal should not be fixed by the mere tug of war 
between opposing national ambitions, but be perma- 
nently based, so far as we can attain it, on the organized 
conscience of Europe and the free judgement of the 
civilized world. In some such cause as that we will en- 
dure to any limit. For a baser cause the war would be 
murder. 



THE END 



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